


Haunted Together

by SunflowerWoman



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cursed Draco Malfoy, Curses, Dark Magic, Dementors, Draco Malfoy - Freeform, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lemon, Love/Hate, Ministry of Magic Employee Draco Malfoy, Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione Granger, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Nightmares, Patronus, Post-War, Romance, Sex, Short, Slow Burn, Smut, Thriller, Trouble, hermione granger - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24242113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunflowerWoman/pseuds/SunflowerWoman
Summary: "Just get out of here, Hermione. I'll handle this myself."Draco hadn't called Hermione by her first name in... well, Hermione wasn't sure if he had ever used it in her presence. As he walked away from her, she noticed a limp in his step and a few droplets of blood trailing in his wake. With a sigh, she followed, her stubbornness getting the best of her. "Let me help," she repeated, quieter this time. "I'm sorry for what I said. Truly. You just--""Bring out the worst in you?"Hermione's face flushed and Draco looked at her, truly saw her for the complex, overly kind, passionate yet maddeningly stubborn woman that she was..((Draco's having trouble casting a patronus charm, but that's not the only thing haunting him. After enlisting the help of the brightest witch of his generation, they soon discover that it's the least of their problems. Dark magic is at play, and somehow it’s inextricably tied to the Malfoy family line, or so they think…))
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 47
Kudos: 259





	1. The Nightmare Begins

Just as Hermione reached out her hand to touch the silvery wisps swirling in the air around her, she woke up with her bedsheets wrapped around her thighs and a sigh on her lips. Her heartbeat pulsed beneath her palm as she wrapped her fingers around her throat. Every night for the past week she had woken up from this dream right before she could slide her fingers through the smoke, and every night there was a whisper caught in her throat upon awakening.

She thought that if she massaged her throat, the feeling would dislodge itself.

It didn’t. In fact, every day for the past week, she had to rush into work with this lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away. She tried drinking more water. Nothing. Clearing her throat whenever she was alone. Nothing. Screaming into her pillow right before she went to sleep. Still nothing.

What made matters worse was that every time she lifted her eyes from her paperwork, she caught the flicker of another’s turning away from her. And it was someone she did _not_ want anything to do with. 

“Draco,” one of the office’s loveliest ladies purred. “Are you ready to go to lunch? I’ve got a reservation at that little rooftop cafe you like so much.” 

The man’s shoulders tensed and Hermione tried not to notice from her spot on the other side of the room. When Cassandra brushed her fingertips across Draco’s shoulder, the man positively _glowered._ He said something Hermione couldn’t hear and Cassandra flinched and removed her hand from his back.

She turned her attention back to her reports and only knew that Cassandra had left by the waft of perfume that drifted past her. The rumble in Hermione’s stomach reminded her that it was indeed lunch time, and she had skipped breakfast this morning when she couldn’t stomach the thought of forcing food down her throat. 

But now she needed nourishment before her stomach scared everyone in the office. She had just gathered her belongings and pushed her chair back when a startled _oh_ escaped her. As she stumbled, a set of firm hands grasped her forearms to steady her. “Sorry, I--” 

The words died on her lips and her mouth dried as she locked eyes with the one whom she bumped into. 

“It’s okay,” Draco breathed, taking a second’s pause to return Hermione’s gaze. When he forced his eyes away and removed his grip from her arm, Hermione could breathe again. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. He turned his back to her and took a step before fumbling with his coat. “I’m headed to Lott’s,” he murmured, a hint of hope woven into his words. “You’re welcome to join me.”

That was all he said before he tore through the office and out the door. Multiple people watched the man leave before they turned back to the woman he had addressed, wondering what she was going to do. 

Clutching her purse tighter against her, Hermione’s face warmed as she followed Draco outside, careful to avoid the stares trailing her out the door.

\- o - 

She hadn’t meant to go to Lott’s. Her feet clicked down the sidewalk and she was determined _not_ to go to Lott’s. She had even insured that she turned the other direction once outside the office to make sure she didn’t run into him.

But by a stroke of fate, she ended up at Lott’s anyway. Draco was standing outside the cafe’s doors and when he noticed her approach, his face lightened in a way that made Hermione’s breath hitch. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he stated, rubbing his hands together and blowing on his knuckles. A plume of smoke curled from his lips. “For fuck’s sake, let’s go inside before we freeze our asses off.” He held the door open and gestured for Hermione to head inside. 

As the doorbell jingled behind them, Hermione tried not to panic. She couldn’t back out once he saw her or she’d feel terrible, but now her stomach churned. What was she doing here? What was she doing here… _with him?_

The hostess recognized Draco and dazzled him with her best smile. “Mr. Malfoy,” she chirped, “What a pleasant surprise! Your favorite table is right this way.” She turned to Hermione with a swish of her ponytail. “I’ll be right with you, ma’am.”

“She’s with me,” Draco corrected, narrowing his gaze at the hostess. “And we’d actually prefer a table by the window, if possible.” 

The woman’s nose twitched but her smile never faltered. “Of course,” she cooed, placing her hand on Draco’s elbow as she stepped past him. “Right this way.”

Hermione avoided Draco’s gaze as he glanced over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t sprinted in the other direction. But she followed, like a moth to the flame. Once they were settled at a charming circular table by the front window, the hostess handed them their brunch menus; well, she handed Draco his menu and pushed Hermione’s into her face, her hand lingering on Draco’s for half a second longer than appropriate. 

Draco cleared his throat and the woman left the pair alone. Silence settled over them until their drinks arrived, warm tea for them both, although Hermione felt some firewhiskey were better suited to the occasion. Her spoon clinked loudly against her teacup as she swirled honey in its depths. 

Neither of them spoke for a long while. Draco seemed content staring at the flurries floating past the window, his long fingers idly rimming his cup. Hermione couldn’t swallow the lump in her throat to save her life. She took a gulp of her tea and hoped it would expel her nerves, but all it did was burn her tongue. She sputtered and tried not to spit her drink across the table.

Draco’s eyes flickered towards her, but his chin remained firmly planted in his palm. “I apologize for inviting you here so suddenly,” he murmured, furrowing his brows together slightly. “I just have a question for you and wasn’t sure how to phrase it or best… ask.” He shifted in his seat and sat up straighter as the waitress arrived to place croissants at their table. 

Hermione nodded her thanks to the girl and snatched one from the plate. She picked at it and left the pieces on her plate, too unsettled to eat. Buttery flakes stuck to her fingertips and she brushed them off on the napkin set in her lap. Sucking in a breath, she forced herself to meet Draco’s eyes. A jolt of electricity ran up her spine and something stirred in her memory but before she could grasp it, he licked his lips, successfully distracting her without even trying. 

“I was wondering…” He paused to cut a croissant in half and apply some apple jam. After setting down his knife, he stared at the pastry and turned it different ways in the light. “Can you cast a patronus charm?” 

His voice was so soft that Hermione squinted to read his lips. “Can I… what?” If Hermione didn’t know better, she would have sworn some color rose to his cheeks.

“A patronus,” he croaked, scraping off the edges of his croissant with his thumbnail. “Can you cast one?”

Hermione blinked and knocked her wrist into her teacup. Before it could spill she quickly picked it up and tossed back its contents, now _seriously_ wishing it were spiked with something. Anything. The waitress arrived and refilled their cups before she could respond. “Why yes…” Draco’s eyes flickered up to her mouth as she spoke. “Yes, I can cast a patronus charm.”

He nodded as though he knew the answer all along. “Of course, you’ve always been gifted.” He took a huge bite of his pastry then, jam sticking to the corner of his lips. In a few bites, the bottom half was gone and he took to spreading more jam atop the other half. “But how do you know it’s working? When you cast it?”

The question made Hermione pause and she couldn’t stop the next words that flew from her lips. “Draco… are you having trouble casting a patronus?” She watched him wince in response and a gentle smile crept onto her lips. “It’s okay,” she breathed, trying to reassure him. “It’s a difficult charm for the best of us. And not one many people ever need, truthfully, unless faced with a dementor.”

Draco’s eyes darkened at the mention of that creature and Hermione’s curiosity piqued. Had he run into a dementor recently? Why would one be loose in London? And why would it be attracted to Malfoy? 

The man took a generous sip of his tea and downed the entire cup in one fell swoop. After his glass was refilled - _damn,_ that waitress was attentive - he returned his eyes to Hermione, only this time decidedly avoiding eye contact. “That’s why I thought to come to you,” he admitted, although with a grit of his teeth that Hermione ticked away in her mental notes. “You were always brilliant while we were in school, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to ask.”

The lump stuck in Hermione’s throat throbbed and she coughed, waving off Draco’s concern as gracefully as possible. “I’m fine, just a tickle in my throat.” He nodded and she took a sip of tea before continuing. “Well, in essence you just need to think of a happy memory. The happiest one of your life.” When his hand gripped his cup tighter, Hermione wondered if he even had a happy memory strong enough to cast the charm. “Then you just focus on the feeling and attempt to cast. Your patronus will take on the form of an animal, and it’s quite handy for transferring messages to others across large distances.” She took a small bite of her croissant and her stomach betrayed how hungry she truly was.

Draco took a deep breath and his demeanor brightened considerably, perhaps happy for the distraction. He waved the waitress over and ordered them real food instead of light pastries, allowing Hermione a say in the meal plan once he realized the waitress was only having eyes for him.

As the waitress walked away with a swish of her hips, Hermione covered her mouth to hide a chuckle and failed miserably. Draco’s raised eyebrow only made her laugh further and she hiccuped to a halt. “Sorry,” she cackled, accidentally kicking his leg under the table. “I just don’t think you realize the effect you have on people.” 

“On the contrary, Granger, I’m well aware.” Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and pointedly avoided the wait staff’s stare from across the room. “They’re normally not this overbearing but I’ve never brought a woman to this establishment before. They’re like vultures waiting to pick me apart.”

Hermione shook her head. “They’re waiting to pick _me_ apart as soon as I’m left alone. Honestly, they’d probably worship you like a god or something.” 

Draco’s eyes crinkled in a smile and he hummed softly. “Yes… I suppose you’re right. Doesn’t make it any better though. They’re all the same.” He brushed his bangs out of his eyes and cast a cursory glance towards the girls, causing them to giggle in fits and run to hide in the kitchen. “Really, they’re acting like children, which is not the least bit attractive.”

“I assume you prefer someone more direct like Cassandra,” Hermione mused, lacing her fingers together and setting them on the tablecloth. “She suits you.” When Draco crinkled his nose again, she was genuinely surprised.

“Cassandra? That witch is just interested in my money or my looks, perhaps both. No, she’s not to my tastes at all.”

Hermione wondered who _was_ to his liking but didn’t dare ask. After all, it definitely wasn’t her.

\- o - 

A few days passed and Hermione’s dreams grew more vivid. Along with the smoke, she could now taste tart apple on her tongue as she inhaled. Instead of standing in empty darkness, she now stood outside but was unable to feel the cold. Snow covered the ground and sprinkled her shoulders in dust, but even as it melted from her body heat, she couldn’t feel it. The sky was still dark and the distance was faded, so all she could see was a line of trees encircling her. That and the smoke.

It was thicker this time and swirled in soft tendrils in the air, but not much else had changed in its appearance. As Hermione threaded her hand through it, the lump in her throat formed again and were she able to make a sound, she would have cursed to the heavens. 

When she awoke, sheets tangled around her thighs and sweat soaking her shirt, all she could taste were apples.

\- o - 

Draco had been missing from the office for two days when he finally showed up, but he looked like hell. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his normally gray irises looked black. In total, he looked a bit like a zombie shuffling through the office. Hermione felt bad for him since he must have been on a tough assignment and the vultures wouldn’t leave him alone.

“Do you need anything, Draco?” Cassandra asked him, digging her thumbs into his shoulders in an attempt at being _friendly._ Her reddened lips pouted as she leaned over his shoulder, pressing her breasts against the nape of his neck. 

It was positively revolting to watch.

Hermione rose from her seat and wandered to the community coffee pot, filling two mugs generously. One for her and one for--

“Draco,” she stated plainly, holding the mug from the rim for him to take. “When are you able to review those Confundus reports?” 

The look that crossed his face was one of pure relief. “Right now, actually,” he affirmed, rising from his chair and effectively pushing Cassandra out of his way. He had already shrugged her hands off by the time Hermione arrived, but the woman still hovered like a mosquito. 

“Take them into the conference room?”

The pair walked away from Cassandra’s sour expression and Hermione tried not to notice when Draco put his hand on the small of her back. 

“I don’t have any reports,” she blurted as soon as the conference room door was closed behind them. Draco had files in his hands and he spread them out on the open table before taking a seat. “I know,” he chuckled, his lips twitching in what looked suspiciously like a smile. “But Cassandra doesn’t have to know that.” 

The wheels of her chair squealed loudly as Hermione took a seat beside Draco and a small part of her died inside. _Of course I’d get the obnoxious chair._ She pulled a random file in front of her and flipped it open without a second thought. Inside was the portrait of a man whose ribs pressed tightly against his skin, visible around his tattered clothes falling from his stick-like limbs, and his eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Hermione couldn’t help but stare since something was glowing in their depths but before she could get a closer look, Draco had snapped the file closed, its cover swatting across her nose on its way down. 

“Hey!” she cried, attempting to snatch the file back. Draco clutched it in his hand hard enough that the file crinkled, and when she tried to reach for it, he barred her with his chest and their bodies smushed together. Normally such contact with any coworker would make her uncomfortable, but… no matter, she wanted to see the file!

“Granger,” Draco grunted, grasping her shoulder to hold her at arm’s length. “That’s not for you.” 

A sparkle in his eye twinkled and she knew he was amused at her behavior. “Then why bring it in here!” she huffed, pressing against his palm to lean forward and retrieve the file. His fingers dug deeper into her skin and a warmth coiled in the pit of her stomach, but she paid it no mind. “There was something I wanted to see.”

His grip faltered and she leaned across him to grasp the file, and she thought she felt his hand skim her hip before she sat back down again, this time pulling her leg up beneath her. By the time she glanced in his direction, his elbows were on his seat’s armrests and his hands pressed together against his lips. 

Their coffees forgotten, they leaned over the file together once it settled on the table space between them. Hermione skimmed its pages with interest, Draco feigning his own. He had already seen everything the file, and all the others like it, had to offer. He had their portraits ingrained in his mind. But perhaps Granger would be able to offer some assistance to his own investigation.

“Why, Draco, these men were all drained by dementors.”

He nodded, his lips pressed into a firm line. He studied her face as intensely as she studied the pages. She was too invested in her studies to notice. 

“But I don’t understand. It says they didn’t receive the kiss. Why are they so… so-”

“Dead?” Draco offered. He placed his hand over hers and guided her to flip the page. “Tormented, but not kissed,” he spoke softly, feeling Hermione shiver against his arm. She pored over the details on the next page and caught Draco’s movement as his body shuddered a sigh. He shifted away from her and ran a hand down his face, leaning back into his seat.

She turned to him then, a question on her lips that she didn’t know how to ask. The patronus question from before. These files about dementors. What else was he hiding? Her eyes roved across his face, taking in every feature. Gaunt cheekbones, more defined than she’d ever seen them. A dullness to his eyes, abnormally devoid of color even for him. Dry, cracked lips, surely strange for a man who was prided on his appearance. He swallowed and she followed his adam’s apple before noticing that his skin, too, was paler than usual.

“Draco,” she murmured, turning her torso to fully face him. He flinched away from her and she scowled. Before he could stop her, she grasped his hands in hers and flipped them over palm side up. There were traces of burn marks across his skin and the pads of his fingers, some of them scabbed over, some still raw and close to bleeding if she pressed hard enough. Overuse of magic. Normally over-eager first years got these marks - Hermione would know, after all, having been one - when they couldn’t control their magic yet and it splintered off their wands like whips made of fire. So why would Draco Malfoy, a revered bachelor and talented magic-user, have them?

The man’s eyes narrowed and he drew his hands from hers, snapping up all of the files he had brought into the room. “I think that’s enough for today, Granger, _thank you._ ” 

“Wait--” she sputtered, knocking her knees into the table as she stood to stop him from leaving. But he was quicker and more agile than she anticipated, so he slipped from her grasp with ease.

The funny thing was, as he stormed past her, she caught a whiff of apples again.

\- o - 

When Draco didn’t return to the office the following day, Hermione sought him out. She excused herself from work at lunch, saying something about Crookshanks being ill, and pattered down the street towards where she assumed the man lived. His file didn’t give an exact address, but it gave the street name. The houses on the row were small and a vast forest stretched behind them. Being winter, darkness fell early and Hermione cursed herself for her foolishness. He could live anywhere! There was no way she was finding him before she lost her fingers to frostbite--

But a flash of white light quickly fading through the trees pulled her towards the treeline, and she stumbled through the ankle-deep snow as she stepped off the sidewalk. She couldn’t see a house nearby but the light was curious, and if her instincts were correct, magic was being used. Possibly dangerous magic.

As she inched closer, she heard a man’s voice cutting curses through the air. It was a familiar sound, and her heartbeat quickened. _Draco._ She cleared her throat as quietly as possible, the lump suddenly aching. Pressing her ice-cold fingers to her throat to check for physical injuries despite knowing she’d find none, she was annoyed to find nothing there, as per usual. Huffing and spewing a thick cloud as her breath cooled in the air, she stomped across the snow and burst through the treeline to step into a small backyard, the ground a trodden blanket of white with streaks of red crisscrossing throughout. Hermione shivered at the sight, and not from the cold seeping through her jumper. 

A flash of red whizzed past her ear and she lunged forward to dodge the stunning spell. “Bloody hell!” she shrieked, scrambling to find her wand in her sleeve holster. “I come in peace!” Before she could collect herself and aim her wand at her attacker, two strong arms hoisted her out of the snow and planted her on her feet.

“ _Granger_ ” the voice hissed, the sound making the woman flinch. “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

Hermione leveled a steady glare at the Malfoy heir. “ _Me!_ What are _you_ doing tossing spells into the air! What if someone sees you! I thought you were smarter than that!”

Draco released her and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes clenching shut. “This is my property, you daft woman. There’s no one around for at least a kilometer- well, except for _you_.” He punctuated the word with an angry jab to her chest. The spot throbbed beneath his finger and he smirked cruelly. “Now go the hell away before I petrify you for trespassing.”

“Well--” Hermione balked, knowing he was right but not willing to accept it, “You’re clearly not well! Just tell me what’s going on and I can help!”

“Help?” Draco drawled, his eyes slowly scanning her from head to toe. “You’re hardly dressed and damp from snow! Stumbling blindly through the dark forest without a clue of what’s ahead! You’re in no position to help me!”

Hermione growled lowly, a sound she didn’t think she could make. Returning his chest jab, she poked him repeatedly with each word she spoke. “You. Need. My. Help. You’re trying to conjure a patronus, right? But it’s not working? I wonder why not!” Throwing her hands in the air, her exasperation filled the air. “Poor little Malfoy, doesn’t have a happy memory because he spent his entire life being a sodding prick!” 

For an instant, Draco recoiled from Hermione’s words and his wand slipped from his fingers. It fell to the snow soundlessly. “You don’t know,” he rasped, a tortured look marring his features. “You couldn’t possibly understand. How foolish of me to trust you, trust _anyone,_ even for a second.” Slowly, as though he were slogging through water, he picked up his want and turned his back to her. “Just get out of here, Hermione. I’ll handle this myself.”

He hadn’t called Hermione by her first name in… well, Hermione wasn’t sure if he had ever used it in her presence. As he walked away from her, she noticed a limp in his step and a few droplets of blood trailing in his wake. With a sigh, she followed, her stubbornness getting the best of her. “Let me help,” she repeated, quieter this time. “I’m sorry for what I said. Truly. You just--”

“Bring out the worst in you?” 

Hermione’s face flushed and Draco looked at her, truly saw her for the complex, overly kind, passionate yet maddeningly stubborn woman that she was. It was enough to bring some color to his own cheeks and a warmth spread through his chest. A sigh passed his lips and his breath pooled around him before dissipating a few seconds later. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I can cast any bloody charm I come across. Except for this one.” He twirled his wand between his fingers absentmindedly and chewed on his lower lip. The motion broke the skin and he spit blood onto the snow with a grimace. “Maybe I really don’t have a happy memory, not really.”

A twinge of regret gripped at Hermione’s heart as Draco repeated her own words. “I didn’t mean that,” she muttered, crossing the space between them. She took his hands in her own and felt how frigid they were. Blood smeared across her palm and she ignored the metallic tang invading her senses. It brought back painful memories, and those wouldn’t serve her now. They wouldn’t serve either of them.

Sliding her own wand into her palm, she held it out and whispered, “Expecto Patronum.” Maybe seeing the spell in action would spur some kind of understanding in the man. Silver strands spewed from her wand tip, slowly circling in the air around them. But before the spell could take hold, it sputtered out and faded before their eyes. Hermione gasped and tried again. Then again. A third time. The results were always the same. The spell started out strong, the tell-tale white light seeping out into the air. But then it faltered and cracked violently, breaking Hermione’s heart with it. After six unsuccessful attempts, she felt Draco’s hand squeeze her own and his body press against her backside. 

“Looks like we’re both having some trouble,” he whispered, his breath warm against the back of Hermione’s neck. 

_Oh, shit._

\- o -


	2. Breaking the Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially changing this from a one/two-shot to a WIP. Sorry, not sorry! I've got the entire thing planned out so if everything goes according to plan, this will end after 10 chapters. Thanks for reading. <3 Reviews welcome!

They stood outside in the snow for hours, both of them trying- and failing- to produce a proper patronus. Every time her spell fizzled and the light flickered out, a strangled sound caught in Hermione’s throat. The woman about ripped her own hair out and Draco’s presence only made her agitation that much stronger. “This has to be _your fault_ ,” she hissed after the first hour. At the time, Draco didn’t respond. 

“I’ve never had issues before!” 

Draco clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“There must be something we’re missing!”

He packed his hands in the snow to ease the burns crawling across his skin.

“Are we cursed? Who would do this!”

His body shuddered and slipped to the ground since if it was a curse, they were very much _screwed._

It was a little past midnight by the time Hermione dragged her feet to sit with Draco on his back porch. Despite the cold, there was a fine sheen of sweat coating her skin and dampening her clothes, which, compounded by the fact that she started off with damp clothes, turned her lips a shade of purple. She pawed at her face with her sleeve and whimpered when she realized that she could no longer feel her cheeks. 

Draco sighed, the thousandth one of the night. “Can you go home now? I’ve got to try and get some sleep tonight, which I can’t do if you’re standing out here waving that thing around.” 

Hermione drew her lips into a fine line, or she would have if she could feel her face. “No,” she croaked, wincing at the rawness in her voice and lightly bumping her shoulder into his. “Let me warm up some in your house. Do you have tea? I can make some.” She stood and flexed her fingers but it didn’t help much. “I have to thaw out before I can apparate anywhere if I’m gonna avoid splinching.” 

When Draco begrudgingly conceded and padded through his back door, he left it open so that she could follow. Inside, they were greeted by a sparsely-furnished kitchen whose walls were the same pale green someone’s face turned when they got seasick. Hermione snorted once she saw how shabby this part of his house looked, but he must have been too tired to retort or defend his lifestyle. Hermione watched as he plopped down face first on the couch in the adjoining sitting room, his body going limp before he even drew a blanket around himself. Tutting at his clear lack of survival skills, she lifted her wand and limply waved it at the fireplace across from him. It crackled and smoked for a few seconds before a low flame curled to life around the single log occupying the grate. With a frown, Hermione waved a few logs from the stack- if you could even call the twigs scattered across the floor a _stack_ \- into the fireplace and called it good enough for now.

“The tea is in the cupboard,” Draco murmured, his face smushed into a couch pillow. “Just don’t burn the place down.”

Before she moved to the kitchen to put a kettle on, Hermione draped the solitary blanket in the room across Draco’s lengthy figure. He breathed a little better and made a grunting sound that she took to be a thank you. Her hand lightly brushed across his hair as she swept out of the room and back to the kitchen, and she was surprised that she could feel how soft it was through her numbed fingertips. 

She rifled through his cabinets and found a few potion bottles, some half empty, others cracked. She pulled the stopper off one and sniffed before dabbing her finger along the rim and tasting it. Vitamin potion. As the kettle was set to boil, she placed the vitamin potions on the floor by the couch and jumped out of her skin when Draco’s hand grabbed her wrist. Undoubtedly, he could feel her pulse racing beneath his fingers.

He had turned his head so that he could address her- probably to tell her how he liked his tea or something else mundane- but his eyes were dulled and looked a bit lifeless. Drawing a shaky breath, he opened his mouth to say something, but… nothing came out. After a few seconds of frozen silence, he turned his face back into the pillow and released her wrist. She hovered for a moment but the kettle’s shrill cry forced her attention away. 

As Draco slept, Hermione sipped her tea by the fireplace. The warmth from its flames filled the small sitting room and the chill in her bones subsided with each passing minute. Draco’s breathing steadied as sleep took hold; the sound of his breathing coupled with the crackling fire, the soothing mint in her tea… Hermione’s eyes slid closed and she fell asleep with her back against the wall. 

A low moan filled the air and Hermione’s eyes snapped open. There was no telling how much time had passed since she didn’t own a watch and Draco apparently didn’t own a clock. The war had taught her many things, one of which being how to awaken at the slightest sound or shift in the air. But in this moment, an unwelcome headache ripped through her temples and her eyes watered. Blinking rapidly and dispelling her tears, she scrambled across the floor to Draco’s limp body. His breaths came in short gasps and his eyelids twitched open and shut repeatedly, revealing the whites of his eyes and causing the hair on Hermione’s arms to stand on end. “Draco!” He didn’t stir but another raspy moan passed his lips. “Malfoy!” She was hesitant to touch him but right as her palm hovered over his chest, his entire body tensed and began convulsing violently. “Shit,” Hermione cursed, raising herself up on her knees and digging her hands into his shoulders to force his body to still. “ _Draco!_ WAKE UP!” 

At her touch, his body ceased all movements and he lay still, so still that she had to watch his chest for the rise and fall to show he was breathing.

He wasn’t. 

“Fucking _Christ!_ ” In her panic, the proper steps for CPR escaped her. All logical thinking flew out the window at his skin paled before her eyes. She did the only thing that seemed natural at the time: raising her open palm, she brought it down with as much force as she could muster, the resounding _crack_ from skin on skin contact making her head spin. 

Draco’s bloodshot eyes snapped open and he sucked in a jagged breath, the blood spilling from his split lip lining his teeth crimson. It took him a moment to come to his senses, and the grey of his eyes betrayed the turbulence of whatever he had just experienced. His gaze narrowed at the panic seeping from Hermione’s every pore and the hand raised in attack. “Granger, what the _fuck_ are you doing?” he cried, his heartbeat loud enough now that even Hermione could hear it. It’s like the organ was beating in overtime to make up for the minute it had just lost. Hermione had braced herself over his body, one hand clutching his shoulder tight enough to bruise, the other raised in preparation to strike again. It was one thing to have a wand aimed at your head, but a hand raised to attack? He hadn’t seen one of those in years, and the last time was from a woman unhappy with his sudden disappearance from her bed that morning. 

He knew for a fact that he hadn’t fled _this_ woman’s bed, and if anything, she was the one invading _his_ space and privacy. 

Hermione’s face flushed as Draco gripped both of her wrists and wrenched her away from him, but he didn’t let go even as he sat up and glowered at her. “What kind of a person would attack a man in his sleep?” Draco hissed, his grip tightening. “Especially after being invited into his home, drinking his tea, and Merlin knows what else!” 

“You were dying!” Hermione yelled, visibly flinching from the sharpness to her voice. “You weren’t breathing, Malfoy!” Her chest heaved violently and her nostrils flared with each breath she took. 

The sternness in Draco’s features cracked instantly and he pulled away from Hermione like she’d stung him. The couch creaked as he pressed his body as far into the cushions and away from Granger as much as humanly possible. But as soon as any semblance of worry settled across his brow, it vanished, replaced by a flash of anger and the curl of his upper lip. “So you _strike_ me? That was your big plan? The brightest fucking witch of our time, ladies and gentleman! Can’t handle a momentary crisis!” 

It was Hermione’s turn to anger, her face reddening instantly. The air around them crackled from their combined rage and frizzed the ends of her hair. “You would be dead without me, you ungrateful bastard!” She pushed herself off the ground and scattered potion bottles in her wake. One rolled under the couch and clinked as it hit the back wall. “I just saved your life!”

_“Well maybe it didn’t need saving!”_

Draco’s face fell to his lap as he clenched the woven blanket in his fists. He tugged at the faded fabric until a small hole ripped between his knuckles. When Hermione didn’t say anything, he stole a glance her way. 

The woman was _crying._ Tears fell down her cheeks in silent waves as she defiantly returned Draco’s stare, the pink covering her face creeping down her neck and tickling the edge of her collarbone. She refused to even blink. The chocolate of her eyes swirled with a mixture of emotions that were too foreign and complex for Draco to interpret. 

With a groan, Draco ran a hand down his face before swatting at Hermione’s arm to make her stop. Even that felt awkward as hell, so he cleared his throat as delicately as he could. “God, Granger, pull yourself together. It’s fine. You’ve wished me dead countless times since we were kids.”

Hermione’s tears ceased but she hiccupped in their place, shaking her head repeatedly. “Never,” she breathed, rubbing her sleeve across her cheeks to dry them off. “I’m sorry, I just-- That caught me off guard. And I haven’t slept since I’ve been up with you all night, and my magic is near depleted at the rate we’ve been going.” Another hiccup forced itself from her chest and she jumped, placing a hand to her ribs and rubbing the tightness forming there. “But I’ve never-- Draco, I’ve never wished you dead,” she whispered forcefully, shifting her weight from foot to foot uneasily. “I can’t believe you would think that ill of me.”

Draco was speechless. His expression turned blank before Hermione’s eyes, starting with the crease in his forehead, the bunch in his brows, the stormy look in his eyes, aaaall the way to the hard clench in his jaw. Of course Hermione -Fucking- Granger didn’t have an evil bone in her body. It was all him. All his troubles, all his nightmares, all his misdeeds - they all led him to this dreaded moment, where he would die alone and decrepit on a rickety couch in a house that mirrored his own decaying body. Even the creaking in his joints matched the wheezing in the floorboards. Karma was a fucking bitch.

Hermione Granger wasn’t, apparently. 

He forced himself to stand and brush past the woman, but his body was so weak that instead of knocking her over, he almost knocked himself over in the process of shoving past her. She reached out her hands to steady him, but he growled lowly and sidestepped out of her reach. “You’re not here to bring me back to good health, _Nurse Granger_ ,” he huffed, bending over to rummage through a lower cabinet in the kitchen Hermione hadn’t checked earlier. From inside, he produced a small cauldron, various ingredients, and a handful of potion bottles, each one dirtier than the last. After inspecting each one, he placed the dirtiest off to the side to wash and blew into the others to remove some of the dust that had settled there. 

Hermione watched as Malfoy began brewing more potions, but she didn’t ask what they were for. His wand gingerly tipped various ingredients into the pot, and he magicked a wooden spoon to stir as he gargled water from the sink faucet and magically patched up his split lip without the aid of a mirror. As the potion bubbled and a bitterness filled the air, he drank apple juice from the carton in the fridge. The true image of every bachelor Hermione had ever known.

While he crumpled the newly-emptied container in his fist and tossed it into the bin, he addressed Hermione’s stiff figure in the other room. “If you want to make yourself useful,” he grimaced, begrudgingly accepting that Hermione wasn’t about to apparate home on her own accord, “you can take a look at those books over there.” He jerked his chin towards a stack of texts on the bar. “If you need, uhh, water or something? Help yourself.” He watched from the corner of his eye as Granger seated herself at the bar and traced her fingertips across the cover of each tome. “I don’t have much since I only rented this place out recently, so you may have to conjure anything specific you may need.” She didn’t respond and instead cracked open the cover of the uppermost book and began to read.

After about thirty minutes, Draco bottled a few vials of orange liquid and set a new cup of tea in front of Hermione. She smiled softly in thanks, and he took a seat beside her on the only other bar stool he owned. It wobbled beneath him and he scowled at his own cheapness in purchasing temporary furnishings. “Why do you think neither of us can cast a patronus?” he murmured after a moment, blowing lightly on his own mug. Some color had returned to his cheeks but the dark circles rimming his eyes remained. It must have been about five o’clock by then, and the thought of returning to work at nine made his head throb. 

The rising steam from their mugs tugged at a thread in Hermione’s memory but Draco’s words pulled her focus away. She blinked to clear her thoughts and responded with a simple, “I’m not sure.” They sat in silence until Draco took a loud sip of his tea. “But you must have some theories if you’ve collected these books already.” 

Draco clicked his tongue in agreeance but didn’t say more. 

“I mean, you had those files of Azkaban prisoners in the office the other day.”

He took a generous swallow of tea.

“And now this book on dementors.”

He lay his cheek against the cool bar top and closed his eyes. 

“Draco, I think you owe me some answers, especially after you almost died on that couch!”

The man groaned and clenched his eyes shut. “Can’t you learn something on your own first so we can actually have a decent conversation about it? Or is that too much work for you?”

Hermione ignored the daggers in his voice and flipped the page in her text. “ _Fine,_ but I’ve got to call out of work first since there’s no way I’m facing Derek after tonight.”

\- o - 

They spent the early morning hours reviewing all of the information Draco had gathered; or more accurately, Hermione reviewed Draco’s books and notes scribbled in the margins while he slept down the hall. This freed Hermione to use the sofa, so she scattered various texts and notepads around her to refer back to them as necessary. Dog-earing pages usually bothered her, but there was little she could use for a bookmark besides the loose threads from the couch, and she really didn’t want to tear the furniture apart any more than it already was. Still, each time she creased the corners of a page, a swell of guilt filled her chest.

By the time Draco emerged from his bedroom at half past one o’clock that afternoon, freshly showered with a loose white shirt draped over his shoulders, Hermione was out cold. The man hesitated in waking her but he at least moved the open book from her chest so that she could breathe without a weight bruising her ribs. A sigh sounded as she rolled onto her side and smacked her lips in her sleep, causing Draco’s eyes to crinkle in what could have been interpreted as a smile. 

He busied himself making a fresh pot of coffee, not quite the drink he wanted but the more appropriate one, and scrambling a handful of eggs for them to devour. He wolfed down the entire first batch on his own without realizing it, so he had to make Hermione her own plate afterwards. Even the smell of food didn’t cause her to stir. Draco figured she could sense his shoddy cooking skills and her subconscious mind was merely protecting her from having to eat his overcooked eggs out of politeness. 

When she finally awoke, his laughter peeled through the room as she padded around the corner with a giant green pen mark across her cheek and hair so voluminous that she could have blocked out the sun and caused an eclipse. There was a hint of mischief in his eyes as he watched her try to tame her mane while taking a seat next to him at the bar. When he pressed a fork into her palm so that she could eat the breakfast he had prepared, his hand lingered on hers for a second longer than necessary.

\- o - 

Hermione made it back to the office the following day, but Draco remained home to nurse his wounds or do Merlin knows what. She had to remind herself that what Draco did on his own time was of no concern to her, but she couldn’t stop the seed of worry snaking its way up her spine. Throughout the previous day, he had downed more potions than any adult should have taken, a joke on his lips about how he had built up a tolerance. _Oh please,_ Hermione mentally huffed as she sharpened a pencil. “He’s ridiculous.”

“Who’s ridiculous?”

Hermione jumped in her seat as Cassandra snuck up behind her. “No one!” she insisted a bit too quickly, convinced that her coworker could hear the ringing in her ears. 

The woman’s nails dug into the back of Hermione’s chair as she leaned closer. “Not Draco, surely?” she purred, forcefully swiveling Hermione’s chair around so that she could stare her down. “Because him even being _seen_ with you is what’s ridiculous. Everyone knows he’s of high breeding, and you’re…” Her voice trailed off but the look she gave Hermione made the woman’s blood start to boil. “Well, not his type.”

She had been through too much crap over the past twenty-four hours, no even longer than that!, to have to put up with Cassandra’s bullshit possessiveness over a man that wasn’t even hers. “Cassandra,” she snapped, enjoying how the woman flinched. “Unless you’re here to discuss the presentation that you’re late on, _again_ , since you were late last week as well, I suggest you keep your nose where it belongs before anything happens to it.” Hermione’s smile was predatory. “I’m known to break noses that are in my way.” 

As Cassandra turned and stomped away, Hermione wished the woman’s heel would break.

It didn’t, but she caught the tail end of an insult directed at her backside. _No matter,_ Hermione told herself, reorganizing her space. She had a mission to complete while at the office and any distractions could jeopardize her success. There were exactly twenty steps between her desk and Draco’s, and inside Draco’s bottom drawer-- “The one that sticks,” he had told her as he pressed a jagged key into her palm-- were the files on Azkaban prisoners that he requested she retrieve. 

_“I’ve already asked to work from home,” Draco dismissed evenly the night previous. “I won’t be returning to the office for at least a week. You’ve just got to grab those files so we can compare them with our notes. Otherwise we won’t have all the variables and could miss something important!”_

Ministry officials weren’t allowed to go through each other’s belongings since they all worked on different cases, and an individual would already have access to all the same information on cases they shared with another. So she had no legitimate reason to snoop through Draco’s effects without raising suspicion, and Cassandra was watching her like a hawk. A bead of sweat dripped down her neck as she attempted to strategize. _If I wait until Bert goes to lunch, he’ll probably invite Cassandra. But will she go?_ In truth, Hermione wanted to petrify the entire office, grab what she needed, shove Cassandra’s face into the countertop, and step over her fallen body as she exited the building. There was no question that she _could_ , but jeopardizing her job wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. While she could have been hired elsewhere with ease, receiving a citation on her record simply wouldn’t do. Those traveled with you, you know.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose when a whisper floated on the air and hovered just outside her ear. 

_"Did you hear? Lucius Malfoy was released from Azkaban! Apparently the release actually happened last week but it just hit the Prophet today. But now that Draco’s absent from work, do you think he’s spending time with his father?"_

_"There’s no way he’d spend time with that snake!"_

_"Yes, but rumor has it that he never even visited the man in prison! Maybe he regrets his decision and… and… well, I don’t know. I can’t imagine being related to a convicted Death Eater, let alone have one as a father!"_

The whispers became so quiet that Hermione had to scoot her chair closer to the sound to catch anything at all. 

_"You don’t think… Acting strange… Sympathizer… The wife… During the war? Unresolved… Curses...”_

Hermione grit her teeth but couldn’t catch anything more. What she did hear didn’t make any sense no matter how she spun it. The speaking parties abruptly stopped a moment later anyways as Phyllis asked them to lunch. The entire office staff began to file out, some turning to the break room for homemade sandwiches, others grabbing their coats and gloves to brave the winter weather for tastier prospects.

Scanning the area for any stragglers, Hermione quickly stood and gathered her belongings to blend better into the crowd. She waved to Stan and took a few steps towards the door before pausing to make sure he walked out. Once everything had stilled and the only sounds came from the heater grumbling above her head, she dipped behind Draco’s desk and unlocked the drawer. She would have to remind Draco that casting a ward over the drawer to stop anyone without the key from opening was a bit paranoid, but the thought died on her lips as she peered down at a drawer stuffed with far more files than she had seen the other day. On the very top, Lucius Malfoy’s ghostly stare bore a hole right through her skull. 

Her forearm started to throb, and she sucked in her teeth as the realization that Draco had never told her of his father’s release took hold. She didn’t think he had told anyone, actually, not that she knew of. What if Draco didn’t have anyone he could confide in?

Chills raced up her arms and she placed the files in her magically-enhanced handbag, their touch somehow exuding a cold that filled her lungs with lead.

\- o - 


	3. Unorthodox

As soon as was socially acceptable, Hermione apparated into Draco’s kitchen without warning. She expected him to be sitting right where she had left him; hunched over on the uncomfortable bar stools, potion-spiked drink in hand, scowl painted on his lips. But the man was nowhere to be found, and she checked all his usual haunts to make sure. The back porch, the grassy patch under the large oak in the backyard, the pantry (in truth, she didn’t know why she checked there since it wasn’t like he could fit inside the small closet space), the living room sofa, _behind_ the sofa, the foyer... The only place she hadn’t checked was the bathroom, the hall closet, and… the bedroom. 

She peered down the long hallway, counting the approximate number of steps it would take her to reach the end of the hall. Light spilled out from the crack at the bottom of Draco’s bedroom door, and she thought she heard his saying something. Did he have a visitor? Hermione’s face flushed at the thought that he had a _lady_ visitor and she would be intruding upon their private time. The idea was enough that she turned in a tight circle, unsure where to go. He had told her to return after work, but had she come too early? Too late? She had stopped by her own flat to pick up some belongings, but perhaps that was a mistake. What if he didn’t want her here anymore? What if she was being nosey about something she really didn’t have any business in?

But then she remembered: She was _also_ having trouble with a patronus, and while her troubles and Draco’s may not have been linked, her instincts told her that there was more to this-- this _thing_ than they knew. They had only just scratched the surface. After shuffling from the kitchen, to the living room, back to the kitchen, then over to the hallway again, she clenched her fists and decided to just interrupt whatever Draco had going on in there. What was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with how dating or sex worked. If she knocked and he told her to go away, she’d apparate back to her house and take the files with her. 

She ran a hand through her knotted hair, grumbling lowly as her fingers caught in the thick curls. Prickles of pain rippled across her scalp as she tore her hand free and forced her hair into a messy ponytail. It wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do. She took a deep breath, felt the air press fill her lungs like a balloon about to burst, and forced her feet to move. Aside from the whispers leaking from beneath Draco’s door, the only sound came from Hermione’s boots scuffing the floorboards. 

With each step she took, her nerves doubled. It wasn’t like she and Draco were friends, not really, so she was potentially about to seriously invade his privacy. But he did invite her into his home in the first place… and he did tell her to come back… and he _did_ give her a task to complete. Wouldn’t he want to know when she had accomplished it? Her rationalizations brought her to the door, at least, so all she had to do now was knock. Lifting her hand, she poised her knuckles to rasp against the worn wood. 

Right as her knuckles nicked the door, it swung inwards and her hand landed on Draco’s chest instead. Candlelight flickered behind Draco as he peered down at her quizzically, one delicate brow raised in question. “Granger,” he stated, stepping towards her to close the door behind him. She was too startled to step backwards as he came closer, so her entire forearm pressed against his sternum. Even through his t-shirt, his body heat nearly burned her arm. 

“Did you get what I asked for?” 

There was a rawness to his voice that caught Hermione off guard and reminded her that she _must have_ interrupted... well, something. “Did I interrupt… something?” she asked, the hitch in her voice very clearly giving away her thoughts. 

“What do you think you’d be interrupting?” Draco returned smoothly, a smirk playing on his lips. He leaned his forearm against the wall beside her and caught the hand pressed against him between his fingers. “Nervous little thing, aren’t you, Granger?”

If there had been more light in the hallway, he would have seen her neck break out in sweat. Although offended at the notion that she was somehow little or worse, skittish, heat seared across her skin and settled knowingly at the juncture between her thighs. Draco was draped precariously- no, deliciously- over her, his height nearly caging her between his arms. 

It wasn’t a situation she often found herself in, and some primal part of her excited from it. Her lips parted as she steeled herself to retort, defend herself, say _something_ , but there was a hardness to Draco’s eyes, one she recognized as defiance against submitting to pain, that stopped her. She noticed that nothing stirred behind him and no whispers continued, meaning he had probably been alone after all. Right as her eyes shifted to the door, his body language became defensive and he led her down the hallway to the sitting room before she understood what was happening. 

“Draco!” Hermione squawked, dropping onto the couch as the back of her calves pressed against it. 

“The files,” he said forcefully, clearing his throat and massaging it with his fingers. “Have you brought them?”

Hermione shot a glare his way as she pawed at her purse resting just beside her foot. “Yes, of course. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.” She began pulling files from her bag and setting them on the cardboard box Draco had set up as a makeshift coffee table. Each time she held a file, a shiver ran up her arm until she set it on the box. 

Draco sat on the floor across from her and began picking through the files. He stretched his leg out in front of him and accidentally tapped her foot, but he didn’t move it away. “You should take your shoes off,” he murmured around the pen cap caught between his teeth. After making a note on one of the files, he recapped his pen and _accio’d_ a glass of water from the kitchen. He downed it in one sitting and sent it off to refill in the tap. 

His nose was buried in three files at once, so Hermione sighed and removed her shoes, tucking them beneath the couch. She gingerly picked up the first file she came to and started reading. 

**ROWLE, THORFINN**  
**CONVICTION:** Crimes against the state, crimes against humanity, murder in the first and second degrees, incitement of riots, aggravated assault and battery, PARTICIPATION IN THE FIRST AND SECOND WIZARDING WARS on the side of Voldemort--

Hermione could see a scratch where the file had been altered from saying He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to Voldemort, probably after the conclusion of the second war--

 **CONVICTED DEATH EATER**  
**STATUS:** Deceased  
**CAUSE OF DEATH:** Accelerated deterioration of the mind and body; aided by dark magic  
**DEMENTOR’S KISS:** Denied

There was mention of Rowle’s family ties, his survivors, and observation notes from the Auror guards. There were three pictures in his file; one of the day he was admitted to Azkaban after the first war, one when he was re-admitted upon his second capture, and a third presumably right before his death.

The man’s skin was pulled taught against his bones in the third picture so that at first, Hermione thought she _was_ looking at his bones. The image was supposedly in color, but Rowle’s entire body had been drained. As she analyzed the photograph, she noticed his chest rise and fall so slowly that he may as well have been sleeping, but the caverns holding his eyes remained open; dark, but open still. Within them, a single speck of gold flickered like the dying embers of a fire long forgotten. Hermione held the image up to her nose and swore she could smell the decay seeping through the thin paper… 

Out of the corner of her eye, Draco’s body stiffened and a file slipped from his grasp. Before he could catch it, the loose papers within spilled out onto the floor and slid under the couch. Hermione waited a second to see what Draco would do, but he just sat there like the file had frozen his limbs, too. He didn’t blink. He almost didn’t breathe. And Hermione began to worry that he was having another episode or seizure or whatever the hell happened last time. 

Quickly, she slid off the edge of the couch and scraped up the papers she could before scooting across the floor to sit by him. “Draco,” she breathed, leaving the papers in a misshapen stack by his thigh. “Stay with me. Don’t panic.” His hands were biting cold between her own and she bit her tongue in surprise. Without thinking, she settled her legs around his waist and pulled his hands into the space above her breasts, breathing on them and rubbing them between her palms. 

She felt his entire body shudder and his eyes flickered closed. “Draco,” Hermione tried again, more forcefully this time. “You’re okay. Just breathe.” His hands clenched into fists and she tried to pry them loose before he fractured any of the tiny bones. “Really,” she huffed, inching her hips closer to his so that she could reach his face. She’d slap him again if she had to, especially since her wand lay forgotten in the seam of her boot. _I really need to keep it in a sleeve holster…_

Draco’s features were tight, and the vein in his neck pulsed erratically. Taking a deep breath, she removed one of her hands from his and pressed it to his cheek. “Look at me,” she instructed, watching his eyelids twitch. “I mean it, Draco, _look at me._ ” 

His eyes snapped open and she jumped in surprise. They were searching, desperately, for something to latch onto. Settling on Hermione’s face, they traveled between the bow on her lips to the soul of her eyes, unsure which was a better focal point. 

“Good, now breathe with me. In…” She took a deep breath and watched his chest struggle to expand. “...and out.” Her exhale warmed his neck and a shiver ran down his spine. They repeated the process a handful of times before his fists unclenched and his eyes returned to their normal steel hue. 

Draco could feel Hermione’s steady heartbeat in her chest, and without realizing, he spread his palm flat and pressed it deeper into her. Soon, his own heart beat to the same rhythm, calm and composed. As he collected his senses and breathed evenly, he allowed his head to rest in the cradle of Hermione’s hand, oddly soothed by her touch. After a long moment where neither of them spoke, he painfully cleared his throat and croaked out a thank you. As he did so, he tore his gaze from the woman’s face and swallowed. 

Hermione nodded, her voice now too strained to speak. There was something about Draco, something she couldn’t place, that made her lose her balance. It couldn’t have been just his looks since Hermione’s attraction was never defined solely by looks, or she would have never dated Ron all those years ago. So this unhinged feeling puzzled her; it was like her composure dialed back every time she was in his presence. Forcing her limbs to move, she placed Draco’s hand on her chest in his lap and removed her hand from his face. A wave of disappointment crashed in his eyes but she did her best to ignore it. The cold that followed curled her fingers as she settled them on her thigh and began rubbing them against her jeans to keep warm. 

Clearing her throat, she pushed herself backwards since she had practically been sitting in his lap and that alone sent another wave of warmth to a very inappropriate place. She felt something shift beneath her butt and reached down to pull out a photograph. The same shock of blonde hair sitting before her reflected back at her from the photograph, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “D-Draco--”

“I know,” he winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t seem to escape that bastard no matter where I go.” His lips pressed together and glared at the picture from afar. “But we have to consider all angles. He was a prisoner at Azkaban, same as the rest of them.”

The image slipped between Hermione’s fingers and fell to the floor between them, Lucius’s vacant expression staring up at the ceiling. The man looked lifeless, much like the others, although not as derelict. The same light in all the prisoners’ eyes glowed from his portrait, only brighter. He hadn’t suffered as much as the others. 

“I didn’t know your father had been released,” Hermione swallowed, trying to sound casual. “Did you go to see him?”

The look Draco gave her reminded her of their long-held animosity as kids. They frowned at each other, but he continued nonetheless. “Would you go see the man who forced you into servitude and struck you for insubordination?” Rolling his eyes, Draco placed his heel on his father’s picture and ground it into the floorboards. “She asked me to, you know. My mother.” Loose pieces of hair fell into his eyes as he continued pulverizing the image as best he could with only his sock. “ _Forgive him_ , she told me. _He didn’t have a choice,_ blah blah blah. The usual rubbish.” Draco cracked his knuckles one by one until all had popped. “I didn’t intend to go. I had even agreed to meeting Cassandra--” the twitch on Hermione’s lips almost made him feel better, “--just to avoid it.” 

He stopped his ministrations on the portrait and clicked his tongue. “But my mother is persistent and quite deviant when she means to be. Before I realized what was happening, I was watching a squad of Aurors deliver my father to her. I’m sure she knew I was at the meeting point, just as she had planned, but my father had no way of knowing. Somehow, though…” Draco drummed his fingers against the floorboards. “He knew I was there. Sensed me, I suppose. A father’s intuition.” He sneered, once again reminding Hermione of who she was dealing with. “When he saw me across the platform, he didn’t react. Mother didn’t even notice, or pretended not to, anyway. Father only glanced my direction before turning away again, like I wasn’t even there. Like the traumas of Azkaban made him wish he never had a traitorous son.” 

There was a hardness to Draco’s voice, and Hermione pitied the man. “My parents…” she started, hesitantly. “They don’t remember me either. Before the war, I--” She wheezed at the memory and decided not to finish her sentence. “Well, they wouldn’t recognize me now.” 

Draco nodded, but disagreed with Hermione’s sentiment. “I doubt anyone would willingly forget you, Hermione,” he whispered softly, the tenderness in his voice throwing her off guard. “My father, on the other hand, chose to forget me. It’s for the best, really, and something I wished for repeatedly. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.” 

Hermione hummed in thought but didn’t press the issue. She doubted he really wanted to elaborate and wasn’t going to pour salt into any wounds. “What do you think this has to do with our patronus problem? I’ve read your notes on dementors, I’ve reviewed these prisoner files, and we’ve both discussed the patronus at length. I don’t see a direct correlation,” she admitted, massaging the back of her neck. 

They began pouring through their findings and bouncing ideas off of one another. Dementors were dark creatures whose origins were unknown, although they were found in droves at Azkaban before it was ever made a prison. The moans of the dead echoed through the halls long before the British Ministry’s first prisoner arrived. Some kind of dark magic created them, and it was that same dark magic that pulsed through the fortress walls. Why the Ministry ever used it as a prison was beyond Hermione; it seemed inhumanely cruel, like the prisoners themselves were considered evil incarnate and prompted into becoming so. 

She sighed and rubbed her temples as Draco rattled off theories. A patronus charm wards off dementors through the use of pure joy. Dementors feed on anguish inside someone’s soul. Perhaps they were both tormented by something which caused the patronus to fail? But Hermione wasn’t particularly sad in that moment and couldn’t think of anything new to spur a failed patronus. 

“When was the last time you cast one?”

Hermione blinked, the question forcing her to think. “It was during the final battle at Hogwarts. I helped ward off the onslaught of dementors attacking the castle.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed as he threaded his next question together. “But was your patronus successful? Completely formed and not just a shield?”

A seed of dread planted in her stomach as she realized that no, it wasn’t. She hadn’t used her patronus much during the war but when she thought back to the final battle, she used it regularly. It hadn’t registered that her tell-tale otter companion was missing amidst the chaos of spells whizzing past her and horcuxes needing to be destroyed. She hadn’t needed to use her patronus after the war, so in truth, when she attempted to cast the spell in Draco’s backyard, that was the first time in seven years. 

“So… something happened during the war?” 

Draco nodded. “But I never tried casting one until last week, so my trauma could have happened at any time.”

“We don’t know that it’s _trauma_ causing the issue,” Hermione scoffed loudly. “It could be anything! Maybe our memories just aren’t strong enough!” 

“Well, what do you think about when you cast?” Draco asked, curiosity dripping from his voice. He chuckled when Hermione’s face flushed, causing her to stutter as she responded.

“It’s- it’s none of your concern, Malfoy!”

“Oh, is it a memory with Weaselbee?” His voice cracked as Draco said the other man’s name. “Truthfully, I’m surprised the ginger hasn’t tied you down yet. Didn’t have the nerve so you dumped him instead? Bravo, Granger. Didn’t know you could reject someone who so clearly fawned over you. Must have shattered the poor man’s heart.” 

Hermione’s muscles tensed and she forced herself not to react, even though she quite wanted to punch the Malfoy heir. “ _No,_ she hissed. It is not a memory involving Ron, not that I would tell _you_ anyhow. And I did not break his heart! It was an amicable separation, something I’m sure you know nothing about, given that you stomp on anyone foolish enough to offer you their heart.” 

Malfoy’s laughter rumbled deep in his chest, Draco himself unperturbed by Hermione’s attempt at an insult. “Not true, Pansy and I had a mutual agreement.”

“That was in grade school!”

“Still counts,” Draco replied with a shrug. “But that doesn’t answer the question about our chosen memories for the patronus. Now, why don’t you tell me what worked for you before and maybe we can decide on something that would work for us now.” He watched as her posture unravelled, clear distrust in her brown eyes. She saddened immediately and he almost regretted asking. _Almost._

As gently as he could, he placed his hand on top of hers and avoided the temptation to lace their fingers together. “Hermione, I’m only trying to help. For both our sakes.”

There it was again, her name on his lips. And on top of that, his hand over her own. A tingling sensation skittered across Hermione’s skin, and she bit her lip to drown out the noise. It was the same feeling she had with Ron all those years ago, and it wasn’t welcome in this situation. She couldn’t afford an attraction to Draco Malfoy, of all people. Perhaps it was merely his proximity that brought on her affections… A matter of convenience rather than true feelings. If one considered logic, that made perfect sense.

But nothing about the way he was looking at her made sense. Eyes lidded, lips parted, leaning close… 

She pulled her hand out from his and busied herself straightening the files scattered on the floor beside them. That look of amusement on his face made her even more agitated and she tugged on her ponytail. “It’s nothing monumental,” she admitted after a moment. “In fact it’s silly.” 

Draco pressed a glass of water to his lips and took a large swallow. “Go on.”

Hermione twisted a curl around her finger and tugged on it repeatedly to keep her grounded in reality. “Well… It’s from when I was a child. Back during the summer after our first year at school. I had returned home to my parents--” The lump in her throat plaguing her for the past week had never truly dislodged, and now it caught chokingly. “They, umm, weren’t used to magic. Even taking them to Diagon Alley to get my books and supplies at the start of the year had been a wonder for us all.” She smiled at the memory before continuing. “I was nervous,” she breathed, growing flustered at the memory. “I wasn’t sure how they would react upon my returning home. I had been away for months and months, and although they were happy to receive me for winter holidays, that could have easily changed. I remember locking myself in my room in fear that they were going to reject me. I didn’t come out for a long time, and at the time it felt like the entire summer had passed. Really, it had only been about an hour before my mum knocked on my door to check on me.”

A small laugh peeled from her chest as she pictured her twelve year old self cowering under a well-worn copy of _History of Magic_ as though it would shield her from all her problems. “She couldn’t get me to open the door on her own, so my dad came around and asked about my schooling. How had it gone? They knew I had made honor roll since they received an owl about it, so really they just wanted to hear me talk.” 

Her breath hitched and her voice lightened the entire room. To Draco, she looked positively radiant in that moment, and he never wanted it to end. It was no wonder she could cast a perfect patronus with a memory as pure as that.

Except right now, she couldn’t cast the perfect patronus. There was something universally wrong with that fact. Hermione’s voice brought him out of his thoughts.

“So that afternoon, we baked at least two dozen cookies and they let me talk their ears off about magic and schooling. I’d never felt so relieved, so happy to be accepted. I wasn’t really accepted at school until I wedged my way into Harry and Ron’s friendship.” She noticed Draco stiffen, and stopped her story. “That’s about it,” she murmured, tapping the tips of her fingers together. “So you just have to find something like that.”

Draco choked on his water. “Right,” he wheezed, setting the empty glass down. “I’ve got loads of happy memories that outshine yours, obviously.” Before Hermione could retort, he unceremoniously shifted the conversation in another direction.

“You know what we need?”

Hermione blinked and her lips puckered. She really had no idea. “Not more vitamin coffee, surely?” The scoff that blew over her forced her to smile. 

“If anything, I’d procure us some of the finest whiskey known to man.” He snickered before sobering up. “No, we need more concrete answers. Facts. Data.”

When Hermione opened her mouth to speak, Draco cut her off. “We need to go to the source of our problems, and we won’t find them in our family problems or these bogus textbooks. We need to go where it all began…” He took a steadying breath.

“Care to join me on a little field trip, Granger?”


	4. Azkaban Prison

Draco was crazy. _Definitely_ , I’m-Going-To-Stop-At-Nothing-Crazy, I’m-Going-To-Die-Without-A-Second’s-Thought-Crazy, Nothing-Matters-To-Me-But-Results-Crazy. And he was dragging Hermione along for the ride. Not that she completely minded, but it did give her pause. She thought her reckless days were behind her. 

Draco had other ideas.

They stood at the base of Azkaban prison, the water roiling and crashing around them, spraying them in frigid mist. It was deep winter and the water droplets on Hermione’s eyelashes froze almost instantly. It was imperative that they get a move on or they would quite literally freeze to death. Draco stood a few feet ahead of her, wand in hand, fingers clenching the wood so tightly that she was sure it would snap. He hadn’t said anything to her in the past hour, so she wondered if he even wanted her there at all. But when she asked prior to their departure, he assured her that _yes_ she was coming along, and _no_ she wasn’t allowed to argue about it. 

So she gripped the portkey right as it activated and appeared in front of Azkaban prison. She didn’t even know why he had a portkey to this place at all, or _how that was legal_ , but she didn’t dare ask now. That would be a conversation for another day, another time, another _universe._

Draco started walking up the short flight of stairs towards the blank prison wall ahead of them, leaving Hermione to scramble to catch up. “Draco!” she called, running up to him and nearly crashing into his backside. “What are you doing?”

Without responding, he raised his wand and traced a high arc through the air. A nearly-invisible ripple spread out across the space between their bodies and the prison wall. Within seconds, the smooth surface faded and a doorway appeared, sans door. Draco took confident steps through the thin film that remained and Hermione swiftly followed. Inside, the fortress was empty. Hermione had expected to see Aurors, prisoners, _life_ , so the vacant hallways, blackened scum on the ground, cold dust in the air… none of it seemed right.

“Where is everyone?” 

Finally addressing his companion, Draco sighed. “This is the unused wing. I thought there might still be a dementor around that the ministry missed vacating, but I don’t hear anything. I don’t feel anything unusual. Do you?”

Hermione pursed her lips and listened to the crash of the waves behind them just as the wall closed back up and silence engulfed the room. The walls were all gray, mute, pock-marked like someone had been shooting muggle bullets into them for centuries. There didn’t seem to be a ceiling; instead, the gray extended from floor to sky and only disappeared once fog took over. A lighter shade of gray, but gray nonetheless.

When Draco turned to meet her eyes, Hermione had to swallow her own sigh at yet another shade of gray. No need to let Draco know how much she already hated this field trip. “No, it’s just cold and bleak. Nothing terrifying in the slightest.” When he nodded and started walking, Hermione had to force herself to keep up. Something about this place made her feel lethargic. Her usual curiosity waned into oblivion, and her limbs felt heavier than that time she tested a lead potion for Harry. 

Hermione had drifted six paces behind him when he noticed.

“Keep up with me,” Draco sternly commanded, throwing a look over his shoulder. “This place… It’s not natural. It will do things to you if you let it. You have to stay by me if we’re to remain safe.” 

Hermione thought she saw his hand reach for hers, but instead his fingers pulled into a fist and he marched ahead, seemingly determined to find whatever the hell he was looking for. It must have been a trick of the light, nothing more. “What are you _doing?_ ” she asked finally once the silence became too much. Not even their footsteps made sound as they trod through the endless corridor. 

“Looking for something, obviously,” Malfoy drawled, his unamusement at the question clear. “What are _you_ doing?” 

“Trying to figure out what the bloody hell we’re doing here,” Hermione ground out. 

He sighed again. The pulse point in Hermione’s neck throbbed painfully at the sound. “We’re looking for information, Granger. Dementors. Markings. Magic. _Anything._ There must be a reason why this wing is closed off. Do you see a way to enter the other areas of the prison from here? _No._ So we’re clearly just missing something. Maybe it’s hidden…”

While Draco continued muttering under his breath, Hermione took to scanning the walls. If there was something hidden there like Draco kept insisting, surely they would find it. They were two of some of the brightest minds of their generation and together, they could muddle through anything… right? She started scouring the holes in the walls for patterns. A half centimeter hole here, a four centimeter gash there, on and on it went. Endlessly. After a while, dark spots bled into her vision so that when she blinked, they flashed beneath her eyelids. When shapes began to take shape on the walls, she paid them no mind. Just another illusion. But then they glowed brighter, golden light seeping from random spots in the wall until it spilled over the edges, forming rivers between them. Constellations formed before Hermione’s very eyes. Upon noticing the change, she blinked rapidly and stopped in her tracks, convinced she was finally going crazy.

Draco, unaware of her pause, continued ahead. 

Hermione’s fingers traced the etchings until pieces of concrete began splintering off like chipped paint on an antique vase. She barely noticed Draco’s voice when he called.

“Granger!”

“Do you see this?” she asked, so softly that he wouldn’t have heard her if the corridor hadn’t carried the sound. 

“Don’t move!”

“What do you think is behind--”

Draco pulled her arm away from the wall with the fiercest scowl she had ever seen. “ _Don’t_ ,” he hissed, “be reckless. We don’t know what’s involved here. You could have cursed yourself! _We_ could be cursed!”

The glowing on the wall started to fade and Hermione pulled against Draco’s hold. He wrapped his arms around her chest, binding her arms to her sides with relative ease. “Stop--” he breathed down her neck, “fighting--” her back curved against his chest, “me.” Their faces flushed from exertion.

In truth, because of the lack of sleep and the random fits of his body shutting down, Draco wasn’t nearly as strong as he should have been. He couldn’t hold Hermione for long. Luckily, after about a minute of non-stop struggling, she slowed down and stopped pulling as hard against his hold. “Draco! Look! It’s what you’re been waiting for, isn’t it? Something to happen in this bloody miserable place?”

As he stared at the wall over her shoulder, he couldn’t help but notice that Hermione smelled like wildflowers. It was a pleasant change to the must of the ancient prison. He traced the lines between the pock-marks with his eyes, loosening his grip on Hermione as he did so. “Do you know what you’ve found?” he breathed into her hair, now only resting his arms around her instead of holding her still. “They’re constellations. See the brightest stars in them? Sirius, Bellatrix; then the constellations themselves. Leo, Orion…” His voice trailed off so Hermione finished for him.

“Draco.”

“Yes,” the man whispered, all the blood rushing from his face. “And there’s Draco.” His body refused to move other than to wrap tighter around the woman in his grasp, as though she were a life line and he was trapped beneath turbulent waves, beating against them to break free. “This was left here by my family,” he said softly, forever grateful that Hermione couldn’t see him now, see the torment swirling in his eyes, in his soul. “The lot of us are named after stars and constellations. Some kind of legacy.” He felt Hermione’s hands blindly grasp at any part of him she could reach in their position-- it happened to be his hips-- and stroke gently. She managed to find the only sliver of skin exposed beneath the hem of his shirt and latched onto it like a leech seeking warmth, seeking skin. Perhaps they were both needing comfort.

He could feel her take a deep breath and he loosened his grip on her arms again. The light in the wall had almost faded completely, so when she grasped his hand and guided him to the wall, he didn’t object. As soon as his fingers skimmed the coarse surface, the light’s intensity multiplied and the concrete began sloughing off and dematerializing in the air. Once the light started to fade and all concrete had melted away, they stood before a cell that Draco recognized immediately. If his blood hadn’t already run cold, it would have turned to ice.

Hermione, the perceptive little minx, felt the shift immediately. “Draco… have you been here before?”

All he could manage was a nod, and even then, he felt weak. Sick. Across from them, a barred gate revealed the true entrance to the cell, the door hanging open and swaying back and forth in a breeze they couldn’t feel. The cell itself was otherwise empty, but there was no mistaking it.

This was Draco’s father’s cell. He had been here before.

“C’mon,” Hermione encouraged, her hand still wrapped around Draco’s. “Let’s take a look. We can leave after we’ve found something.” She didn’t ask how he knew the cell; piecing the constellations together with Draco’s family led to the obvious conclusion. His family had been here. Possibly his _father._ And Draco had come to visit him during his time in Azkaban. She wasn’t even sure how that was allowed, given how strict the laws surrounding Azkaban were. Not to mention how they were there at all. There were a lot of questions forcing their way into her mind, and she wasn’t able to get any answers. Not yet. 

A headache bloomed behind her eyes and she fought it off as best she could. When Draco finally spoke, she gratefully shifted her attention to him. She was on her hands and knees pressing her wand into every crevice of the room when she heard him breathe in deeply, probably steeling himself to say something. Her instincts weren’t wrong.

“When my father was first admitted after the war…” 

Hermione had to stop her investigation so that she could hear the man. He was speaking so quietly that even ghosts wouldn’t have heard him.

Draco leaned his back against the wall and tapped his wand against his thigh. The steady rhythm echoed in the small space like a metronome. “I wanted to forget he was alive. I pretended he had been executed like so many others.” The hollow of his voice made Hermione shiver more than the cold seeping into her bones. “But I couldn’t sleep. There was something I needed to ask him…” His shirt caught on the concrete and pulled up a few inches as he slid to the ground. “So I asked the Ministry to visit. Normally they don’t allow visitors because of the types of criminals housed here and the fact that the location need be kept secret. But since I testified against him...” a choked sound caught in his throat, and Hermione shifted so that she could watch him and ensure he wasn’t about to stoke out. “...they made an exception.”

He didn’t elaborate more. She didn’t ask.

They covered every square inch of the cell and came up empty. “This doesn’t make sense,” Hermione muttered, chewing on her bottom lip. “We were led here. But why? What are we missing?” A tingle in her hands and feet foretold a numbness that she knew would only make things more difficult. Draco probably felt it too. 

A revelation shuddered through Draco’s entire body and he quickly stood from the frosted ground, holding his Hawthorne wand out before him. 

_“Revelio.”_

Hermione watched as he dragged the tip of his wand across the jagged walls, the scratching of wood on concrete making her skin crawl. But she couldn’t speak her thoughts for fear of ruining his concentration; she didn’t want to spend any extra time in this place than she had to, and finding that elusive key piece of information they needed proved invaluable. 

In an attempt to ignore the vomit-inducing noises on his side of the room, she dragged her eyes up Draco’s backside, starting from the swell of his calves and moving all the way up to the nape of his neck. With his head turned to the side, she could spot the edge of his hairline dampened in a cold sweat. If they weren’t careful, they would both end up sick after this endeavor. It was a wonder that any Azkaban prisoners survived at all, and that was before you added a dementor into the mix.

“Aha! Hermione, look here!” 

Scrambling to her feet, Hermione bounded across the room to Draco’s side, a wave of premature relief washing over her. “What did you find?” she asked breathlessly, pressing a hand to his tricep. Even his body felt cold to the touch. 

Rather than tell her what he’d found, Draco decided to show her. Lightly grasping her hand in his, he led her fingertips to the wall. There, etched so faintly that she thought it was an illusion at first, were runes. Golden and metallic like a holograph. As she followed their trail down the wall, she saw that they faded a half meter out from where you stood, so in order to read them all, you’d have to wrap around the entire room. They only revealed one line at a time, as well, so if you shifted your eyes down a few centimeters, the line you had previously studied faded as the line beneath appeared. It was complex magic, and written in a language even Hermione hadn’t seen before. “What… is this…” Eyebrows creasing, she traced a path down the wall and attempted to view more of the runes, but once she stepped away from Draco, the code faded completely. 

Pulling out her own wand, she cast the _revelio_ charm. While she could still see the runes, they were fainter than when Draco had cast, and hers didn’t extend nearly as long as his. She could only view about six centimeters at a time, enough to study only three runes before they disappeared into the distance. Hermione huffed so loudly that the sound echoed in the small room. “Well that’s rubbish!” 

An amused sound caught in Draco’s throat and Hermione turned on him. “Well it is! Why does your spell work better than mine?” 

“Maybe I’m the more talented wizard.” 

She caught the glee dancing in his eyes and punched him lightly in the arm. “Quit it!” 

They laughed together then, an innocent sort of sound that brought them closer to each other. Hermione wasn’t sure if it was the harshness of the environment or the relief of moment’s reprieve. She found herself gazing up at the man, a small smile playing on her lips as he leaned closer, his hand guiding to her hip. Draco drew a breath, drawing in Hermione as well.

Hermione found herself drawn to Draco, pulled in as though they were magnets who had fought their connection for too long. But an unusual golden speck in the depths of Draco’s eyes pulled her out of her trance and she squinted to try and see it better. 

“What’s wrong?” Draco asked, his eyes darkening a shade as he started pulling away from her.

“I thought I saw--” Hermione tried reaching for him but Draco had reverted back into the cold, callous version of himself. The one who didn’t seem to like her as much. Her hand froze midway between them. “Nevermind,” she finished, trying to swallow the odd feeling in her chest. “‘I’m sure it’s nothing.” 

Draco turned towards the wall and recast his spell without another glance her way. 

The swell of defeat filling Hermione’s lungs was startling. A full breath was impossible so she started taking shortened breaths through her nose, praying Draco would either not notice or pretend he didn’t. So far, it worked. 

“I can’t make out these runes,” he grumbled lowly. “And if you had any ideas about them, you would have said something by now.” It stung, how well he knew her without even trying. 

“We just need to do more research,” Hermione groaned. For once the thought of more research turned her off. It felt like they were turning circles around each other, around the true root of the problem. And it was right beneath their noses…

“No,” Draco stated, a hint of dread in his voice. “Books won’t help us this time, Granger. We’ve got to ask another source.” 

Hermione rolled her eyes, her arms crossing in front of her chest on instinct. “Well who do you have in mind? A ghost?”

Draco’s hands clenched into fists and Hermione wished he’d kick the habit. 

“Sort of,” he breathed, turning towards Hermione but avoiding her eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up on top. “But you don’t have to come with me. In fact, it may be better if you’re not there.” When Hermione bristled, he backed away from her. “I’m serious, Granger. It won’t be a pleasant visit.” 

“Well who the bloody hell is it we need to see so badly?”

Swallowing, Draco forced out his answer.

“My father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited for the big reveal soon!! What do you guys think the problem could be?   
> How do you think meeting Lucius will go?
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


	5. Visitation

Upon arriving back at the manor, Draco refused to answer her questions. Instead, he holed himself up in his room claiming to need rest. _Rest,_ Hermione scoffed, tapping her foot loudly outside the man’s door. Arms crossed, she stared at the wooden frame, wishing it would dissolve from willpower alone. If she had the nerve, and part of her did, in truth, she would have unlocked the door with a quick _alohamora_ charm and been done with it. But she couldn’t bring herself to infringe upon Draco’s privacy that much, and he probably had wards set up to prevent her from doing so anyways. 

After about twenty minutes had passed, she knew the man wouldn’t appear anytime soon. Her body begged for her to return home to her own bed to sleep, but if she did that, Draco might take initiative and leave for Malfoy manor without her. Just the idea was enough to incite another wave of anger and annoyance inside Hermione, so she settled onto the couch to keep watch. Flicking her wand at the fireplace, it roared to life in an instant, stirred on by her emotions. 

She knew that Draco could leave for the manor at any moment from his bedroom, but something told Hermione he wouldn’t do that as long as she stayed put and didn’t leave to give him the opportunity to guiltlessly leave her behind. She just had to be patient. Calm. Composed.

Within the next minute, she had moved to the kitchen to make tea. Somehow keeping her hands busy made things more bearable. As the kettle sat to boil, she took to flipping through one of the textbooks on the counter. 

**DEMENTORS:**  
Dark creatures whose origins remain a mystery. Some believe that they were born from cries of anguish during an ancient war and thus, they feed on such negative emotions to stay alive. Others think that dark magic forced their creation, or a failed potion or spell experiment went awry. Regardless of their origins, dementors are feared throughout the world. Some local variants of dementors exist in countries such as Japan and India, where the creature takes on a different shape or feeds on different energy, but the end result of contact with such creatures is more or less the same regardless of these minor physical or behavioral differences. 

Dr. L. Sánchez of Spain’s Magical Creature Registration Department (Departamento de Registro de Criaturas Mágicas de España) studied dark creatures, including dementors, for much of the 1960s. Her findings include…

A list of Dr. Sanchez’s research conclusions lined the page until they were cut off by footnotes at the bottom. When Hermione flipped to the next page, the notes continued. She didn’t have the energy to read and absorb all of that information, so she scanned the page for highlights. Apparently, different dementors were in different states of decay, although the causes of and rates of such decay were unknown. Fascinatingly, each dementor had different types of black robes or clothes; some seemed black at first glance but were really another color altogether- white, pink, green- but stained dark as though they had been drenched in soot. Dr. Sanchez was unsure if these tattered clothing items were stolen from their victims or if the dementors materialized with these belongings. Or if they transfigured them somehow? 

There were pictures of clothing taken from dementors attached to Dr. Sanchez’s notes. There were even a few blurry pictures of dementors floating towards the viewer, slow and eerie. Hermione shivered before closing the book and sliding it away from her. She’d had enough creepiness for one day. 

Taking her cup of tea to the sitting room, she decided to lounge and rest for just a bit. If she was going with Draco-- and by Merlin, did she intend to-- she needed at least a bit of rest. Lucius Malfoy had never been her favorite individual, but she liked to think that as a well-mannered adult woman, a respectable one, that she could stomach an afternoon spent with the man. She was the better person, one who wouldn’t stoop to his levels of… well, discriminatory and prejudiced thoughts and actions. 

She took a large gulp of tea, burning the roof of her mouth but preferring the heat to the cold still chilling her bones. They had left Azkaban at least an hour ago, possibly longer, and she was _still_ shivering. Pulling the woven blanket over her shoulders, she relaxed as best she could and cupped her mug in her hands. If Draco was truly resting, shouldn’t she be allowed a moment’s reprieve as well? Without warning, her eyelids drifted closed and her mug tilted precariously low, a rivulet of tea sliding down the edge of the mug and across her fingers. 

She was awoken a few hours later by a log in the fireplace falling onto the metal grate. When her eyes opened, she was greeted by the setting sun blinding her through the uncurtained windows, causing her to flinch away from the light. A dark figure was standing over the fire, arms outstretched as he placed his palms on either side of the mantle. 

“Draco,” Hermione croaked. Throwing the blanket off of her, she scrambled to her feet and walked towards him. She rubbed her eyes. He was still standing there, brooding. 

“You were out a long time.” 

The sound of his voice took Hermione by surprise, but she held her ground. “Are we leaving now?” she asked, wanting to get this thing over with. The faster she entered the manor, the faster she could leave it. And she needed Draco to do either of them. 

“Are you sure you want to go?” Draco asked, turning his head slightly to look at Hermione. The flames reflected in his eyes and made him look as sinister as she imagined all Malfoys were at their core. Well, all except Draco maybe.

Or was she kidding herself? Draco was still a Malfoy, and old habits died hard. What if he was playing her this entire time, using her to help him with his problem, only to throw her out as soon as the mood struck? Despite the heat from the fire, she shivered. Even if she didn’t fully trust him, she had to trust him at least _a little_ to go into the manor with him. To have even been in his house, going to _Azkaban prison_ of all places, with him.

She had been silent for so long so Draco had time to stare at her, watch her movements. In the way her shoulders stiffened, her eyes flickered from the fire and back to him, her weight equally balanced between her feet… He could tell that she was unsure but still determined to go with him. Damned Gryffindors and their stubbornness. Or maybe that was just Hermione’s own obstination coming through. 

When she finally said yes, she was going with him, he didn’t have a say in the matter, she could handle herself, yada yada, Draco nodded. Placing his hand on her shoulder, he apparated them to his family home with a loud crack. The fire roared, brighter and louder, for a few seconds before settling down and instantly going out, a trail of smoke curling in the air like a snake.

\- O - 

Lucius Malfoy was sitting in an armchair, staring at the fire crackling in his own fireplace, the orange light flickering off of the white marble mantle. The warmth made him feel and look better than he actually was; even Hermione could tell from a distance that the man was sickly pale, his skin a grayish, greenish hue. Not even the firelight could hide how unnatural he looked. His eyes glowed like freshly-cut marbles. Glowing. Like they held all the life the man had left.

Hermione was standing at the back of the room with Draco’s mother Narcissa. Neither of them spoke. Narcissa stood erect, proud, yet suspicious of Hermione’s presence. The younger witch knew that she had questions, questions neither of them could afford to ask right now. Not while the men glared at each other. 

Really, Draco was the one glaring while Lucius returned his stare with grace. “Draco,” the man breathed, seeming to struggle to get the two syllables out. “You haven’t told me to what I owe the pleasure of your company… and that _girl’s._ ” 

From across the room, Hermione could see Draco stiffen. 

“But what I can see is…” Lucious swallowed. “You’re afflicted, just like the rest of us.” He wrapped his fingers around the silver snake head of his cane and his bones showed through the skin. “But what I don’t understand is _how_ , Draco, you’ve come to suffer.” The man looked like he wanted to stand, move closer to his son, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. With a wince, he continued. “Now I know we haven’t spoken in… some time. But you’re still my heir. The heir to the Malfoy line. And we need to take care of one another in times of… crisis.” He swallowed again and looked longingly at a pitcher of water on the table a few feet away. 

Draco ignored that. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have reason to be. And I’m not here to be your sodding heir. Look, we went to Azkaban and saw runes. These runes.” He held up a piece of paper where he and Hermione had drawn the runes in lead pencil. For some reason trying to draw them with magic didn’t work. “I know you’ve seen them. I just need to know what they are.”

Lucius’s entire body twitched and his features tightened. “You shouldn’t have been able to see them. Not yet. It hasn’t nearly been enough time.” 

“Time? What has time got to do with anything?”

The older Malfoy bristled, even in his decayed state. “Watch your tone, boy. I’m still your father. That deserves some amount of respect.” When Draco opened his mouth to retort, Lucius cut him off. “The affliction, it’s… it gets worse over time. An infection,” he clarified, his gaze returning to the flames. “It burns… slowly. Smoldering, taking its time to spread.” The logs whistled as steam rose from them. Lucius shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his voice hollow when he spoke next. “If they’ve come for you, it’s only a matter of time.”

Jaw clenched, Draco sucked a breath through his teeth. “I should have known you wouldn’t be any help.”

“You’re the one who came to me,” his father said softly. “I would have never invited you here after that stunt you pulled.” 

“Oh, and yet despite my failings, I’m still the heir? Go ahead and give the title to someone who’s worthy, father. Not the son who disgraced the family legacy by betraying his blood.” 

Lucius’s cane whipped out to strike Draco but the man deftly dodged, a sneer on his lips. “Can’t strike me now, can you? Dying in your chair like an invalid. Who’s the disgrace to the family now?” He kicked his father’s cane to the ground and it clattered against the grate covering the fire. Turning away, Draco stomped on his heels back to where Hermione stood. “We’re leaving.” He didn’t even glance in his mother’s direction as he grabbed Hermione’s arm. Before he could leave the room, Lucius’s voice drifted through the air to him.

“The feeling… never truly goes away,” Lucius whispered, looking and sounding like a ghost himself. “Once they’ve penetrated your mind, your soul… there’s nothing you can do. Dark magic,” he muttered with a sickly laugh, “takes root and never lets go. A patronus charm won’t help you, boy. We’re headed for the same fate.” 

Draco wrenched Hermione’s arm and started dragging her from the room. But right as he reached the threshold, Hermione tore herself away. “We haven’t learned anything, Draco! We can’t just _leave!_ ” 

With a snarl, Draco turned on her. “There are no answers here, Granger. It was foolish to think coming here would solve anything. But _fine_ , stay here for all I bloody well care.” 

As he charged through the doorway and towards the manor entrance, Hermione bristled. “Stubborn ass,” she cried loudly, glaring at his retreating figure. Draco’s mother, Narcissa, stood still as a statue by Hermione’s side so she shifted her attention to the woman. “We need information,” Hermione stated plainly. “Clearly your son isn’t well. Neither is your husband. Am I to believe they are afflicted by the same ailment?” 

Narcissa’s lips pressed into a stiff line but she didn’t respond.

“I saw those runes too,” Hermione continued. “They have to mean something to you, to your family.” Her eyes flickered to Lucius. He sat still as a corpse. The slight rise and fall of his chest was the only indication that he was still alive. Hermione’s eyes returned to Narcissa. “If your husband won’t help us, surely you can, Mrs. Malfoy. I know you care for your son.” 

Mrs. Malfoy walked from the room then, leaving Hermione to follow. She remained calm and collected all the way to the entryway of the manor. Hermione sent a glare in the woman’s direction as she exited the building. It seemed that Draco could be wrong after all. His parents were of no help and hadn’t given them much information at all. 

Right when the massive front doors were about to close shut behind Hermione, Narcissa reached out and grabbed her arm with a desperation that forced Hermione to stop. “Miss Granger,” the woman intoned softly, “you must convince Draco to return to the manor and enter his father’s office. There’s an entry in the family journal that will help you both. Unfortunately for you, if your statement about what you saw on those walls is correct, you’re as entwined in this as Draco, I’m afraid.” Her eyes shone like the sea as she looked down Hermione’s frame. “Although not as seriously, perhaps. Not yet.” Narcissa drew a breath and Hermione could taste salt in the air. “Lucius will be out of the manor tomorrow and I will see to it that he stays that way for as long as possible. You’ll need to be quick. And please,” she gripped Hermione’s wrist tighter. “Save my son before it’s too late.”

\- O - 

They argued for at least an hour, possibly more.

“We have to go back!” Hermione cried, watching Draco pace a hole into the floor. Her throat ached from the constant back and forth they had been going at, but he wouldn’t see _reason._ “Your mother said--”

“I don’t want to hear what that witch said!”

“She _said_ that your father does have answers! In the journal! If you hadn’t insulted him, perhaps we would have answers by now! Maybe we would know what’s wrong with you.”

“Ahh, what’s wrong with _us,_ dear Granger, isn’t it?” Draco laughed coldly, the sound ricocheting through his sitting room. “Apparently seeing those runes is a bloody death warrant! Who knew!”

“We don’t know that,” Hermione countered, placing her body in front of Draco to stop his movements. “There could be a cure or something. We should visit St. Mungo’s to see--”

“Mungo’s isn’t going to help,” Draco seethed, trying to brush past Hermione. She didn’t let him pass, and he stepped on her foot instead. This threw him off balance, and he stumbled into the wall. With a groan, he righted himself and grabbed at his bruised shoulder. It didn’t take much to injure him these days. “You heard the bastard. It’s only a matter of time.” 

Hermione ran a hand through her curls and sighed. “You still haven’t told me who this mysterious 'they' are or why they're-- how did your father phrase it? Coming for you?”

Draco groaned and pressed his back to the wall. “There’s nothing to tell--”

“Obviously there is! You’re keeping secrets, and I can’t help you unless you tell me the truth!” 

Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Draco avoided the witch’s eyes. “You don’t need to know,” he said darkly. “And if you weren’t so goddamned stubborn I’d send you home right now. You don’t need to be here anymore, Hermione. If a patronus isn’t gonna help me, I don’t need your tutelage.” 

Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’m worth more than my spell skills,” she snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Besides, I’m _invested_ now. If you didn’t want me along, you should have kicked me out days ago.” When Draco didn’t say anything, she sighed and moved to lean against the wall next to him. He was still holding his shoulder, so she forced his hand away to try and get a look at the ‘injury.’

Draco flinched and pulled away when she tried to pull up his sleeve. 

“Draco,” she glared, “let me help you.” 

“If you want to get me naked, you’ll have to try harder than that.” He snickered as she smacked his arm. “Hey, that hurts!” he whined, covering his bruise with his hand. 

Hermione’s lips curved into a smile before she turned serious again. “We have to go get that journal, Draco,” she muttered, meeting his eyes. They were defensive, but tired. So tired that the gray looked muted, dulled. She knew he couldn’t keep this up for much longer, and his body would soon adjust to the vitamin potions he downed like shots throughout the day. It was just a band-aid over an open wound, and that band-aid couldn’t hold forever. “If you won’t tell me what’s really going on, maybe that journal will.”

The decision was easy when she put it that way.


	6. The Journal

Draco held Hermione close as they Floo’d to the manor the following morning. There was hardly any need; he had magic’d his fireplace to fit them both comfortably, and when they arrived, the manor’s fireplace was twice as large with marble inlay instead of brick. They had plenty of room to spread out and still make it to the right place. But he held her nonetheless, perhaps because it was an excuse to do so. Or it was the gentlemanly thing to do. Hermione wasn’t quite sure which.

She played along regardless, his warmth drawing her in. What she hadn’t expected was how bony his body felt against her; it was like hugging a skeleton encased in a car seat cover. Were his vitamin potions not working? Was his nutrition in decline? She hadn’t seen him eat much of anything, but truth be told, she hadn’t been paying much attention. It was something she decided to keep a close eye on in the future.

As they stepped out of the fireplace and into the manor’s entryway (apparently there were multiple Floos throughout the house, but the only one you could enter from was in the foyer), Hermione was startled at how quiet the place was. Not a single footstep echoed through its cavernous rooms and hallways, and not a single board moaned with age. “Are there no house elves or wait staff?”

Draco scoffed loudly and took the main stars two at a time. “No, Granger, there are no wait staff or house elves. I’m almost flattered you think so highly of my family’s wealth. Alas, the Ministry saw to taking most of our money as reparations for war damages. Mother still likes to keep up appearances, though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” Even though Hermione couldn’t see Draco’s face, she knew his nose was crinkled in distaste. 

They walked up the massive staircase and turned left. Hermione followed Draco as best she could without having to jog. He was taller than her already but with how quickly he was moving, it was difficult for her to keep up. It was like he had forgotten she was there at all; only his next destination mattered. Or perhaps he wanted to leave as quickly as possible. Either way, he wasn’t making things easy for her. 

“Draco,” Hermione cried, unable to keep the annoyance from her voice. “We don’t have to be in such a rush. Your mother said that she was keeping Lucius from the manor all day.”

He chose not to answer her. 

They rounded endless corners until Hermione was sure they were lost and Draco had forgotten the way to his father’s study. Just as her tenth sigh passed her lips, the click of his shoes ceased and they stopped just outside two large, black doors. They weren’t made of wood like one expected; rather, they were wrought from iron. “Made to keep intruders out,” Draco explained before Hermione could ask. “Anyone outside the family bloodline can’t enter without an escort.”

Draco raised the pad of his thumb to his mouth and bit down, hard enough to draw blood. Then, he placed his palm flat against one of the doors. There were no handles. A wave of magic rippled out from where he touched, and he was able to push the doors open with ease once it passed. Taking Hermione’s hand, he led her inside. “My father usually casts some kind of spell for his visitors to stay in the room without hindrance, but since he hasn’t taught that to me yet, we’ll have to stay linked while you’re in here.” He raised their joined hands as evidence. “If you let go of my hand for any reason, you’ll be struck with a cruciatus curse.”

“What!” Hermione cried, but Draco was already pulling her inside the room. It was smaller than she anticipated, about the size of a respectable bedroom. The walls were painted black and looked wet for some reason… like they had never truly dried when painted. Hermione tore her eyes away from the decor to find Draco scanning the bookshelves lining the walls. “Where do you think the journal is kept?” she asked, unsure where they would start looking.

“Not anywhere obvious,” Draco muttered, placing his free hand on his hip. “I’ve been in here numerous times throughout my childhood, and while Father spoke with visitors or chastised me for being outsmarted in school…”

Hermione swallowed, knowing he was referencing how oftentimes, she was one rank higher than him in their Hogwarts classes.

“...I often perused the titles of his books. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything, but I know the general layout of this room. It won’t be on the shelves, which only leaves the sitting chairs or the desk. It’s probably in the latter.” Draco crossed to Lucius’s desk and forced Hermione to move with him. He held her hand firmly, but not so hard as for it to be uncomfortable. Sitting in the large leather armchair, he began opening drawers. 

Hermione was surprised that he could open them so easily if the office itself was nearly impenetrable, but once again, he answered her question before she could ask it. 

“Only the head of household or their heir can open these drawers.”

She mildly wondered what would happen if she tried prying open a drawer but decided that she didn’t really want to know. 

Draco rummaged through all of the desk’s compartments, careful to remove documents in a specific order and return them properly. He wasn’t finding anything easily, but he remained calm and level-headed the entire time. 

“What if it’s hidden by some kind of charm, Draco?” 

“Not necessary,” he replied with a click of his tongue. “Remember, only the head of house or heir can open this desk. A charm would only complicate retrieving any documents.” He returned everything to its rightful location and began sliding his hand along every curve and flat edge of the desk, looking for an opening or button or _something_ to pop it open. 

His instincts were correct, and after fingering a slit on the underside of the desk, a secret compartment opened close to Hermione’s knee. In truth, Hermione wasn’t sure why she was even there since she was ordered not to touch anything, and up until this point she wasn’t good for anything other than keeping Draco’s hand warm. 

The lack of necessary action on her part was insulting to her character. 

Taking a breath and leaning across her, Draco reached into the new opening and pulled out a faded black leather journal, its pages darkly yellowed with age. He quickly rose, tugged Hermione over to a cozy loveseat a few paces from the desk, and sat them both down. He set the journal in his lap and opened the front cover.

On the first page, an inscription in another language greeted them. “Is that… Latin?” Hermione breathed, unable to stop herself from touching the edge of the page with her fingertips. 

_”Yes,”_ Draco hissed, tugging the journal so that her hand fell away. “What did I say about touching things?” 

A flash of heat rolled across Hermione’s skin as her anger flared. “How do you expect me to help if you won’t let me do anything?” 

Since she was so close to Draco, he recoiled at the harshness of her tone directly in his ear. The movement only allowed a one inch gap between their bodies since the seat was tight for them both. Gripping her hand tighter, he took a deep breath. It was a moment before he spoke. “I need you here,” he said softly, “not to help with the investigation but to keep me sane. This place… There’s a lot of negativity here for me. I’m not sure I’d still be sitting here if I didn’t have you to… ground me.” His eyes narrowed and he began tapping his fingers against Hermione’s knuckles. 

It was obvious he was avoiding looking at her.

Hermione felt a pang in her chest. She hadn’t considered what Draco had been feeling through all of this… Her focus lay on the journal and how useless she felt. Draco’s world was uncharted territory, and he was her guide into its murky depths. She wasn’t used to needing a lead. In truth, she wasn’t even sure how _she_ felt about being in the manor, since she was refusing to think about it. There were a lot of horrifying memories in this place, with these people, that she often tried to forget. 

Apparently, it was the same for Draco.

While she sat chewing on her thoughts, he continued flipping through the pages of the journal. Each page crinkled at his touch, and the sound soothed the tension building in Hermione’s skull. If she kept thinking, brimming on overanalyzing, she knew a migraine would arrive. 

Draco stopped flipping pages and flattened the journal’s spine, applying pressure with his wrist, when he found something promising. “Finally something in English. Look,” he prodded, sliding the journal a bit closer to Hermione.

It was still too far for her to see, so she leaned into Draco’s shoulder and pressed her thigh to his. He held the journal up from his lap so that she could view it. Together, they used their free hands to hold the journal closer to their faces. “It’s a journal entry,” she noted, scanning the page quickly. “From 1734.” Conveniently, when she reached the bottom the page turned at just the right moment. Draco must have been monitoring her eyes or reading speed. 

“It says that the writer, one of your ancestors, also started getting sick. Similar symptoms to yours. But this man is older, probably Lucius’s age.”

Draco nodded, his eyes tracing the slanted handwriting as well. “But if this is a disease, maybe it’s hereditary?”

“But if I’m afflicted too, that doesn’t make sense.”

Humming in thought, Draco flipped the page again. “Now he’s just talking about heirs and marriage lines.” He thumbed through more pages and Hermione tried to keep her curiosity buried. It was like wrestling with a cat that kept breaking free from a cardboard box. Every time she closed the lid, it beat against it until a paw or its head broke free. All she wanted was to snatch the book from his hand and pore through the pages at a furious pace that would put the librarian Madam Pince to shame. But she held back, knowing that this was Draco’s journey, not hers. Well, more or less.

“Here,” Draco said, tapping a new page with his index finger. “There’s no date, but there’s a reference to Azkaban.”

He read aloud: 

_While I was held prisoner in that infernal fortress, I noticed runes on the walls after a few months had passed. They were faded at first, but the longer I was there, the more pronounced they became. I also started to decay physically, which I originally attributed to the poor living conditions of the prison. However, upon returning to my home once my release was finalized, my health has not improved. I continue to rot; the fat melts from my bones, my skin sallows and weakens. Sometimes I bleed without so much as a cut. Something is eating away at me and I haven’t been able to figure out what it is. But I suspect, from the numbness in my fingers and toes, and the way my chest constantly aches and sends a frigidity throughout my body, that dark magic is at play. I am not sure if this is something that another has cast upon me or if it is of my own dabbling in the dark arts…_

Draco skipped down a few paragraphs and continued:

_The runes… I can see them now. Everywhere. When I close my eyes, they blind me with their light. I fear that I am but a shell of a man now; not even magic has been able to mend my body or my mind. The runes press on, and I’m starting to understand them without a need of translation…_

That entry ended and Draco cursed under his breath. He turned the pages more frantically now, so quickly that Hermione feared they would tear. He stopped reading aloud and mouthed the words to himself as he found a reliable entry. Hermione leaned forward to try and see the pages but Draco’s hand was shaking so much that no matter how much she tried to steady the journal, it shook too violently and made the notes impossible to read. 

“Draco, what is it? What do you see?” 

His face had paled considerably, and his chest rattled with each breath he took. Squeezing his eyes shut, he dropped the journal to his lap, the object falling from Hermione’s fingers as well. It was like she couldn’t hold onto it without his help, without the heir’s help, something which prickled at Hermione’s growing frustration. 

Hermione clenched her jaw and squeezed Draco’s hand painfully hard so that he remembered she was there at all. “Tell me what the journal said,” she ground out, her patience wearing thin. She knew that it couldn’t have been easy for him to be here and be reading that journal, but they were supposed to figure everything out from this experience. _She_ was supposed to learn what he had been keeping from her. And so far, he was still keeping her in the dark. “I mean it,” she said, her voice rising. “Tell me before I lose my mind!”

Draco flinched at her choice of words and drew an unsteady breath. Slowly, he reopened the journal and pointed to the designated place where he had stopped reading. “Here,” he said softly, holding the book up to his chest as a sort of backboard. “Read it. Start at the bottom of this paragraph.”

She did as instructed and began reading the entry. This person claimed to have been studying the ailment surrounding the Malfoy family line, and it turned out, it affected the Blacks and Rosiers and other purebloods as well. Not everyone was afflicted, but those who used dark magics regularly decayed at much faster rates. 

“This is absurd,” she declared after a moment. “I certainly haven’t been using dark magic so why can I see the runes? And I’m not a pureblood, either. His theory is flawed.”

“Keep reading,” Draco stated, watching her face. “It gets worse.”

_Even if a person does not regularly use dark magic, they may still be at risk. Anyone who has been harmed or maimed by dark magic is susceptible to the affliction; however, the most prominent cases are in those who have been marked by dark magic permanently. In theory, this “mark” or “scar” still has a bit of dark magic imbued in the wound or marking, and as such, it is constantly emitting negative energies that plague its victim. Side effects may include: trouble sleeping, nightmares, daymares, PTSD, slow decay of motor function or overall physical health, inability to cope with depression, suicidal tendencies and thoughts…_

The list continued down the page. But at the very bottom, one thing stuck out: _Inability to produce a Patronus charm; most likely because in the final stages of affliction, the effects are fatal, and in the most extreme cases where the victim continues to use dark magic or the mark/scar/wound/etc. is never removed, the victim transforms._

Hermione’s head was spinning. One, from the extensive list that need not be so detailed, and Two, from the fact that…

“I’m cursed?”

Draco’s eyes bored into hers as soon as she looked up. “Do you have any… residual… markings from when you were…” He swallowed dryly. “When Aunt Bella…” After a moment, he steeled his nerves and finished. “When you were tortured here at the manor? Or did something else happen during the war that left a scar?”

Hermione flinched and pulled away from Draco without thinking. 

“Don’t!” he cried, throwing himself on top of her to stop her from getting up. His forehead knocked into hers as he stumbled awkwardly, trying not to jab her with his elbows or knees as his body pressed into hers, but their hands remained clasped because he was crushing them between their chests. “Don’t,” he repeated, his breaths shallowing, “pull away from me. Hermione, please. I’m only trying to help.”

He could feel every curve of Hermione’s body pressed flush against his and he tried, desperately, to think of something else- anything else- Harry Potter, bunnies, his father, cold showers, croissants- but the pounding of Hermione’s heart against his own and the wildflower scent of her hair nearly drove him into a frenzy. A strangled sound died in his throat and he pushed himself up so that he wasn’t on top of her, only leaning over her.

That might have made his situation worse.

Because now, not only did the memory of her warmth haunt him, but he could see the way her lips parted and her hazelnut eyes danced. Her back arched deliciously against the sofa, curving her spine towards him. The journal lay forgotten on the floor. Their conversation didn’t matter. In that moment, they were just one man and one woman whose chemistry sizzled in the air, who drove each other completely crazy without meaning to. 

Who cared, just enough, to ease the loneliness in their hearts. 

Just a man and a woman who craved another’s touch; who desired nothing more than to close the distance between them. 

Draco ran a hand up Hermione’s arm, his fingers teasing the inside of her sleeve, when he felt something rough beneath his fingers. Confusion flickered across his face for just a moment and Hermione realized what he had felt. She kicked her knee up on instinct and gutted him, and if she weren’t so focused on making sure he did _not_ do that again, she would have found the groan passing his lips quite attractive. 

“S-sorry!” she sputtered, shifting to an upright position and forcing him back. She still had to hold onto Draco’s hand, but thankfully he was preoccupied with gripping his stomach to notice that she almost let it go. “That was-- I just-- I’m sorry!”

He hissed out a breath before closing his eyes. “Was that what I think it was?” he asked, allowing an inch of space between them. Despite that distance, he could feel Hermione tense beside him.

She nodded, but then realized he couldn’t see her response. “Yes,” she whispered, biting her lower lip. “Yes, that’s my scar. The one Bellatrix gave me just down the hall from here.”

Draco nodded shortly, releasing a breath he had been holding. “Does it hurt still?”

Hermoine shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “No, not usually. Sometimes it will pinch or heat up if I’m having a flashback or bad dream, but otherwise it’s been fine. Ugly and an unwelcome reminder, but fine.” She didn’t want to mention how the healers at St. Mungo’s had declared it irremovable. 

Silence stretched between them and Hermione tapped the toe of her boot on the hardwood floor. “So this scar is what’s causing my patronus not to work. And for me to see the runes?” She already knew the answer but wanted Draco to confirm it. 

“Yes,” Draco agreed. “Yes, that would be it.” He opened his eyes and searched for hers, but she was looking down at her lap. “Hermione,” he said softly, tugging her hand closer to him. He placed their joined hands on his thigh before continuing. “Please allow me to apologize for what my family has done to you. It was wrong, and no amount of words or condolences or atonements can ever make up for it. But I’m trying, and I’ll continue to try for the rest of my life if you’ll let me.”

The man sounded tortured. Broken. Like it was his fault that she had the scar. Like he was guilty for a lot of things that he had no control over. She knew telling him that it wasn’t his fault wouldn’t make him feel better, so she scooted closer to him and pulled his hand to her lips. Pressing a small kiss to his knuckles, she attempted a smile. “Apology accepted.” 

He squeezed her hand and she let it fall into the crook where their legs now met. “That explains why I’m having trouble with my patronus,” she continued, “but what about you?”

Before Draco could shut her out again, she placed her hand over his forearm and felt his entire body shudder. While his body temperature seemed to fluctuate between being warm and cold on an average day, his forearm was painfully hot, like it had just been branded. Hermione knew what was hidden beneath his sleeve but she didn’t know the extent of the damage. 

So when she gingerly began rolling up his sleeve, eternally grateful that he was allowing it, she had to hold back from screaming. What she expected to see was the serpentine dark mark of Voldemort’s followers. That was something she could handle. But what she actually saw… was grotesque. The skin surrounding Draco’s dark mark was raw, red, and throbbing. The scar itself was mutilated with both cuts and craters filling the dark space, some pieces scabbing over, others glistening from blood and pus. It was a miracle that he kept it hidden from her for so long. 

She held her breath. “Why does it look inflamed like that?”

Draco’s eyes shone as they remained fixated on her face. He clenched and unclenched his jaw multiple times before responding. “I’ve been trying to remove it.” A vein in his neck throbbed at his admission. “A mark like this can only be removed by its maker, but he’s dead, so I’ve been trying other methods of removal. Clearly, it hasn’t been working.” He pressed his lips into a firm line before continuing. “In fact, it’s been making everything worse. I thought that if dark magic created the damned thing, dark magic would be able to remove it. But all it’s done is exacerbated my symptoms, drained all my energy, and destroyed any semblance of a sleep schedule that I had. The nightmares keep getting worse.”

“Nightmares?” Hermione asked, forcing her gaze away from his mark. The sight of it made her want to gag but doing so would be insensitive. She focused on his cheekbones instead. “You haven’t mentioned any nightmares before.”

Draco sighed and almost wished he hadn’t mentioned them. “Yes… They’ve been making my life… difficult.” He looked like a ghost then, a mirror image of his father’s decrepit form. Like the memory of his dreams was enough to coax his soul from his body and leave nothing but a shell behind. “But now isn’t the time to dwell on dreams. We should leave before Father gets back.”

Hermione reached down to pick up the fallen journal but Draco beat her to it. “Best let me handle this,” he cooled, careful not to bend the journal’s spine. Although it was an old text, it was magically enhanced to last the ages, so she wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. But bickering with him about who got to touch the journal was pointless, so she nodded and let him return it to the secret slot in the desk. As the desk clicked shut, Hermione took one last look around the room. It wasn’t as ornate as she had anticipated; everything was simple, clean, and in dark hues that made the space feel smaller than it really was. 

They exited the room as one unit, and as soon as the heavy doors closed behind them and magically sealed, a huge weight lifted from their chests and they could finally breathe again. Without realizing it, they took huge, gasping breaths and leaned into each other like survivors seeking shelter and warmth from a natural disaster. The hallway suddenly felt frigid and unwelcoming, so Hermione gladly continued holding Draco’s hand all the way back to the Floo by the front of the manor. She hardly heard Draco when he muttered that using the same Floo would decrease the possibility of raising suspicion. 

As Draco wrapped his arms around her for the return trip to his home, she returned the gesture in kind and wrapped her arms around his midline. A light crinkling, like a note forgotten in one’s jacket, caught her attention, but by then the green flames were already crackling around them, licking their skin without burning. By the time they emerged in Draco’s fireplace, the sound had been forgotten. 

When Hermione went home that night for a much needed break from Draco and his brooding, she dreamed vividly. The same silver swirls that she had been envisioning for two weeks now twisted and danced through the air, but this time when she reached out to touch them, they glowed brighter and stronger than before. Someone’s voice pierced the silence around her, muffled and unclear but with an underlay of urgency that made Hermione’s heartbeat quicken. She opened her mouth to call out to the voice, but the lump in her throat reappeared with staggering force that made her choke. No sound came out. Her eyes watered and she stumbled onto her knees into the snow. Still nothing but the urgency in the air, the unknown voice growing louder but even more incoherent, nothing but a variance in pitch and rhythm. Not even a single syllable could be detangled from its garble.

She awoke unable to breathe. A high-pitched ringing in her ears and a weighted feeling of suffocation kept her up until sunrise.


	7. The Unveiling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Lemon ahead!! Once it starts, you can skip to the page break if you would like to skip it and move on to the story. :)

By the time Hermione returned to Draco’s house, Lucius Malfoy was in a coma.

“What do you mean a coma?” Hermione asked, shrugging off her coat and putting it on Draco’s coat rack. “When did this happen?”

“This morning.” Draco’s voice was raw, like he hadn’t used it in days. Like he hadn’t spoken to anyone since she had left the other night. 

That was two days ago. 

“How did you find out?”

He shrugged, something Hermione wasn’t sure she had ever seen him do. The circles under his eyes were more defined, and he pulled the sleeves of his t-shirt over his hands. Through the thin white fabric, Hermione could see the imprint of his dark mark on his forearm. 

She wondered if it had healed at all or if it looked worse than before. Without checking it, she had no way of knowing, and she was sure Draco wouldn’t willingly show her. Her own scar prickled at the memory of what they had learned about their marks, the dark magic within them. Infecting them. Spreading slowly like ice through their veins until they lost themselves.

Just like Lucius.

Hermione shivered and Draco jerked his chin towards his bedroom. “C’mon, I’ve been working in my room. It’s warmer in there.” He shuffled down the hall and Hermione could hear the door creak as he went inside. 

With each step she took, her heart hammered in her chest. It would only take a few seconds to cross the hallway into the bedroom, and while part of her filled with anxiety, the rest of her brimmed with desire. She was curious, and that made her bold. Bolder than she’d felt in years.

She stepped into Draco’s bedroom and found it aglow with warm candlelight. On the windowsills, on the desk littered with papers and quills and spilled ink, on the floor in neat rows lining the walls. Nothing but simple white candles with wax dripping around them in rings. The room smelled like vanilla cream and each time the light flickered, so too did Hermione’s heartbeat. 

Draco was watching Hermione closely, from the tremble of her hands to the uncertainty in her gaze. Her courage had gotten her this far but it quickly waned. It was like she wasn’t sure where to look or move to, so he patted the spot on his bed beside him. For once, he wished he had made his bed. Hastily, he pulled at his winter quilt- the only blanket he had, really- and cleared a spot for Hermione to sit. “Here,” he stated, smoothing the sheets over with his palm. 

It was like _he_ was the one comforting _her_ , which made the situation all the more ridiculous considering what was happening with his family. Still, Hermione sat beside Draco, the mattress dipping from their combined weight. Gravity pushed their shoulders together and Hermione was grateful that in that moment, he was warm. 

After a moment of silence, Hermione cleared her throat. “So what have you been doing in here? You haven’t come back to work and people are starting to ask questions. Now with your father… Are you planning on coming back?”

She watched Draco’s adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed. “If my father passes, which very likely will happen soon, all of the estate will shift to me. Not to my mother, but to me. It’s an ancient rule that needs undone. Sodding heirs…” He dragged a hand down his face before continuing. “I sent in my resignation letter to the Ministry today. I’ll be inheriting all the Malfoy wealth, the assets, and it’ll need reviewed in excruciating detail. My father also has a lot of projects that probably need abolished, and others that I’d like to start myself.” He leaned his forearms on his knees and tapped his fingertips together. “While there may not be much left, there’s still enough to live comfortably. I could ensure that my mother is taken care of. Hell, maybe I’ll just give her all of it. Or maybe I’ll sell the manor. Merlin knows that place radiates dark energy even while no one is inside.”

Hermione didn’t know what to say so she placed her hand on Draco’s back and rubbed in an attempt to be comforting. His shirt was softer than she anticipated, and she found herself leaning into him even more and applying pressure. It was more a massage than a soothing back rub, really, but Draco’s body shuddered and leaned into her, prompting her to continue. Carefully, she shifted so that she was sitting behind Draco and began using the heels of her palms to dig deeper into the muscles of his back. Although he had lost weight and was particularly bony, years of exercise as an athlete proved good to his body. He must have kept up a workout routine while working at the ministry or else his muscles wouldn’t have been as defined, if a bit emaciated. 

A strangled moan escaped Draco’s lips and he pressed his face into his hands to try and contain himself. _Control_ himself. This was the first human contact he had had in a while aside from Cassandra’s unwanted pursuits and the incident in his father’s office, and the intimacy of it made him feel vulnerable. Made him feel _alive_ , while the rest of his life was in rapid decay. The fact of his father’s impending death made him start thinking of his own, probably not too far behind with the way things were going, and for just a moment, he wanted to be blissfully unaware of that fact and pretend like he could have her, like they could have each other, and like they were the only two souls in the world.

Damaged but together. Made whole. 

When he kissed her, she didn’t pull away as he expected. His lips were featherlight against hers as the possible rejection chilled him to the bone. If he didn’t fully invest, didn’t put his heart into the kiss, the rejection wouldn’t hurt. 

So when she kissed him back and dug her hands into his shoulders to pull him closer, that was all the incentive he needed. With a fierce desperation that startled even himself, he wove his hands into Hermione’s hair and crushed her lips against his, forgetting to breathe. Forgetting that they _needed_ to breathe. 

All he needed in that moment was her. 

When Hermione pulled back for air, he attacked her throat. Nipping at the delicate skin there, he slid his hands up her thighs and gripped her waist, pulling her body taut against his. She was blissfully soft and although not the curviest of women, what she did have, Draco was eager to explore. He kept his hands at her waist, though, in an attempt not to be too greedy. The problem with being rich as a child was that instant gratification felt normal, and as an only child, he often had to remind himself that others’ had needs too. So he waited, partially for himself to show some growth as an adult, but mostly to ensure that Hermione was okay going further than simply snogging.

Luckily, _thankfully_ , she was the one to move first. Her hands slid up his shirt and over his abdomen, the warmth of her hands sending blood rushing to Draco’s groin. He groaned and Hermione grew bolder, dipping her hands into the waistband of his pants to massage the delicate dip of his hip bones. 

It wasn’t enough and it was enough all at once. 

Somehow Draco ended up on his back with Hermione straddling his hips. His shirt had already been removed, so hers was next. As she lifted the item off her body, she ground her hips against his. Draco’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head from how good it felt. He couldn’t imagine being inside her. 

“Granger,” he hissed, curving his hands around her ass and grabbing it roughly. “Who knew you were such a tease.” 

A flush of embarrassment crept across her face and when Draco bucked his hips into hers, it spread to her collarbone. With a boldness that even she wasn’t sure was genuine, she reached behind her and unhooked her bra, freeing herself from its confines. As she tossed the garment aside, Draco licked his lips and eyed the pink of her nipples with a thirst that _needed_ to be satiated. He pulled her so that she was lying on top of him, her breasts against his chest. 

Hermione moaned as he began massaging her, seemingly avoiding the place she wanted him most. “Draco,” she whined, softly biting his bottom lip. “Stop playing.”

Draco chuckled and rolled Hermione’s nipple between his fingers then, enjoying the twitch of her body and the catch of her breath. He pushed her back and caught her breast between his teeth and gave it a hard suck. 

Her fingernails dug into his chest before she shifted so that her hands were braced on the wall. With agonizing slowness, she ground her hips into his again and he bit her breast, both of them cursing aloud.

“Fuck, Hermione,” Draco wheezed, lying back on the mattress. He gripped her hips and rocked up into her, his cock painfully hard by now. “We should have done this ages ago.”

Hermione laughed and lifted her hips to unbutton her pants. Soon she was completely bare and back on top of him, her wetness now coating Draco’s pants. 

“You know, this would be much more pleasurable for both parties if we removed just one more piece of clothing,” Draco sighed, digging his fingers into her thighs and enjoying the imprint left there. He watched as Hermione shifted and began unbuttoning his pants. She pulled the offending fabric down his hips just enough to where his cock was freed before setting her mouth on it. 

Draco moaned loudly as she sank on his length, wrapping her lips around it and lowering her mouth over him. She only gave him a few pumps before she removed him from the comfort of her cheek and slid back up his body to align the tip of his length to her clit. Slowly, she rubbed him against her and moaned, keeping one hand poised on her thigh and the other grasping Draco’s hand. 

She couldn’t believe what she was doing. She couldn’t _believe_ that she was in bed with _Draco Fucking Malfoy_ and that he was practically putty in _her_ hands. It was unlike her to be the aggressor. But Merlin, did it feel good. It felt like this was what had been missing from her sex life all along, the teasing, the power and control that came from being desired and using that to your advantage… It was exhilarating. 

Being with Draco for the past week or two had been nothing short of exhilarating. And she never wanted it to end.

Without warning, she sank onto Draco’s cock and gasped at how well he filled her, how with every roll of her hips, she could feel him inside her. 

Draco allowed her to maintain control for a while, feeling lost himself. She enveloped him in a way that felt heavenly, or what he imagined Heaven would feel like. She was absurdly wet and her arousal dripped down his cock and settled around his balls. He wasn’t going to last long. 

Somehow, she always managed to weaken him and lower his defenses, making it impossible for him to believe he was in control of anything. He tried to play it off and act dominant, but in truth, she leveled the playing field in a way that scared him. No one ever defied him as much as she did, no one ever questioned him as much, and no one had ever made him feel like he was drowning _and_ coming up for air at the same time like she did. 

It was maddening. His cock twitched inside her and he prayed for release. 

Lungs burning from the sudden exercise after weeks of misuse, Draco forced himself to power through. He lifted his hips and drilled into her, forcing a cry from Hermione’s mouth that was absolutely breathtaking. While she rocked her hips, Draco thrust into her with reckless abandon. Their movements didn’t match up but neither of them cared. Hermione’s breasts bounced in time with her hair, which moved in time with Draco’s thrusts. 

Draco gripped her hips and forced her down on him so hard that the intensity of it caused both their vision to blacken at the edges. His cock twitched and his hot seed spurted inside of Hermione, his jaw clenched and back arched the entire time. Hermione gasped for air and wiggled atop him, much to his dismay. As his body unclenched, Draco pulled her off of him and placed her in the space beside him. Not giving her time to protest, he curled up to her and draped his arm across her chest to lock her in place.

“‘Mazing,” he murmured into her shoulder. “Sleep. Rest.” 

Hermione laughed and tried to free herself but Draco only held her tighter. “No,” he groaned. “Not yet. I got off but your turn next. After nap.” 

There wasn’t much she could say to argue with that. They settled on Draco’s bed, the candlelight flickering around them in a soothing way that would have resembled a lullaby if candles could sing.

\- o -

A few hours later, after fulfilling his promise to satisfy Hermione’s needs, Draco took a shower. Hermione stayed behind since she had never been a fan of joint showers, and Draco’s shower wasn’t large enough for the both of them unless they were standing flat against each other. While Draco seemed fond of the idea, and although it was tempting to Hermione since it meant she could shag him again, or maybe he’d shag her against the shower glass… she still declined. 

As she heard the water run down his body and splash on the shower floor, Hermione took to searching his room. There wasn’t much to see so she focused on the papers scattered across his desk. Draped in only his winter quilt, she sat at the wooden desk chair and perused the files. His father’s file was off to the side, so she only glanced at it for a moment. He had notes scrawled on various pages, some she had seen, some she had not. But beneath a pile of those notes was a piece of parchment different than the rest; older. In different handwriting. 

Shuffling the other pages around, she lifted the mystery page to the top and her eyes widened. It was a journal page. From Lucius’s office. From the Malfoy family journal. She hadn’t seen Draco tear the page from the journal but there was no doubt about what was before her. 

Quickly, she scanned the page for all its information and a knot formed in her stomach that quickly dissolved in a pool of acid. She swallowed to keep the bile from rising to her throat and her hands shook.

This information… couldn’t be true. It defied logic. It defied reason.

It meant that they were out of time. It meant that things were far more convoluted than they had originally thought. 

The shower turned off and Hermione jumped. Her heart was pounding in her chest just as loudly as it had thirty minutes ago when Draco’s head was between her thighs, but this time she wasn’t burning with desire… She was burning with _anger_. Unbridled, unchecked anger. As Draco emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, she rounded on him, the journal page crumped in her fist.

“ _You!_ ” she spat, pushing the paper into his chest. 

Draco visibly paled and placed his hand on Hermione’s elbow. “Now listen, Hermione, I was going to tell you--”

“Before or after you shagged me, Malfoy!” 

He flinched and took a step towards her, but she was already backpedaling. “Don’t freak out, we can still figure this out! We’re not out of time!”

Hermione seethed as she threw his quilt at him. As he frantically untangled himself, Hermione was getting dressed. Apparently she no longer wanted a shower. Maybe she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. He wouldn’t blame her, but the thought of her leaving broke what little of his heart he had left. 

“Oh really? Try telling that to your father!” She pulled her shirt on backwards but didn’t seem to care. “He’s in a coma, right? Who’s to say he hasn’t transformed already and sucked the soul out of your mother!”

She knew those words were cruel, but in that moment, she didn’t care. Draco’s normally cool demeanor shifted as her anger sparked his own. “Well what about us being in this together, hmm? Are you turning tail, Hermione? When things get tough, are you gonna run like the rest of them?”

Hermione stomped towards him and held herself back from thumping the man in the chest. “Of course not! Of course I’m still going to help you! I couldn’t live with myself if I let you die, if I let you turn into one of those _things!_ ” She took deep breaths and pressed her forearm into his chest. Despite everything, despite the emotions roiling through her, and despite her best efforts, she still craved his touch. His attention. His _everything._

Draco stepped into her then and firmly grasped her face in his hands. “I need you, Hermione,” he choked out, now his turn to flush pink. “I don’t think I can do this without you anymore.”

Before she could stop herself, Hermione was kissing him. _Hard._

When they pulled apart for air, they ended up in each other’s arms instead.

“We have to go see your father,” Hermione said finally. They had ended up on the floor and were sitting in each other’s laps. 

Draco stiffened but he knew what she said was true. “Yes,” he grumbled. “We need to go see my father.”

They took their time getting dressed, Hermione actually showering this time and putting everything on correctly. Once they were settled, she took Draco’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. It didn’t seem to help. “We’ll be in and out real quick,” she said, watching his face to reveal his thoughts. “Just to check on him and your mother.”

Draco’s pulse point throbbed but he didn’t say anything. They stepped into the Floo and with a flash of green light and ash, they appeared at Malfoy manor.

Immediately, a cold seeped through their clothes and into their bones. Even where Draco had his arm around Hermione cooled. Carefully, they both pulled out their wands and cast _lumos_ to see better. All the lights in the manor were out, and a ghostly rattle echoed through the corridors. Hermione shivered and pulled her sweater tighter around her. She knew this cold. It terrified her. 

Draco took sweeping steps into the study and Hermione trailed behind him, keeping an eye on the corners of the room. They had agreed before coming to be on high alert, but Draco seemed to be stuck on their mission more than anything. Worry seeded into Hermione’s heart as she watched him try to keep calm and in control of his emotions. It was clearly taking everything he had not to run.

She felt the chill in the air deepen to frigidity and saw her breath pooling around her. Draco’s too. He took careful steps forward until something rattled him completely and he rushed to the floor ahead of him.

“Draco!” Hermione whispered, carefully stepping after him. He kneeled on the ground before her and she saw what had grabbed his attention.

Narcissa was lying on the floor, her skin burned with ice and her eyes wide and unseeing. The ocean blue of her irises were tightened, cracked, barely alive. Her chest rose and fell so slowly that Hermione almost didn’t notice. “We have to get her to Mungo’s,” she breathed, now spinning around to check the space in their blind spots. “We need to move. _Now._ ”

Draco lifted his mother from the ground and jogged to the closest Floo, Hermione close on his heels. Just as she gripped the powder and threw it down, in the flash of green light and smoke, she saw Lucius’s decayed form floating through the air towards them, his once refined clothes tattered and blackened, his eyes dark marbles barely visible in his sunken sockets. She could hear his rattling breath from across the room, and she felt all the warmth and joy and happiness seep from her soul and in its place… nothing but misery. 

The green flame swept Hermione, Draco, and Narcissa out of reach, but not before they could see the monster Lucius Malfoy had become. 

Dark magic, the curse on their arms… It spread poison through their veins and into their hearts, soon taking over their souls as well. Until all that was left was a husk of a body intent on ripping the life from another. Unthinking. Unfeeling. Unseeing. 

Lucius Malfoy had turned into a dementor. And soon enough, Draco would be next.


	8. Reinforcements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Character death / somewhat detailed description of death.

The Healers at St. Mungo’s magical hospital were at a loss. Hermione hadn’t heard them say so, but the downturn of their heads, the way they wrung their caps in their hands, the way they couldn’t look Draco in the eye… Their mannerisms said it all. Narcissa Malfoy was as good as dead.

Draco’s back was turned to Hermione so she couldn’t see his face, but she noticed how erect he stood, as though he wouldn’t allow himself to crumple in view of the public. His shoulders were stiff and his arms crossed in front of his chest; a defensive posture. Since Hermione wasn’t family, the staff ordered her out of Mrs. Malfoy’s room and pointed her to a wooden bench down the hall. They were too busy to properly direct her to the waiting area, but in truth, she preferred this position. She didn’t want to intrude on Draco’s time with his mother, as it could very well be their final moments together, but she also didn’t want to be so far away so as to not be of help or support when Draco needed her. 

In reality, she wasn’t sure what exactly she and Draco were to one another or how best to approach the death of a loved one in this circumstance, _is a hand on the shoulder too much or too little? Does he want space or does he want the comfort of company?_ , so she did what always worked best: watched and waited, taking in as much information as possible to assess the situation and how best to proceed. 

Draco made this easy for her since as soon as the doctors turned away, he let his arms fall to his side. So slowly that Hermione almost didn’t see it, Draco held out his hand behind him so that Hermione would join him. In a heartbeat, she was by his side, clutching his hand in her own. Neither of them had quite warmed up since leaving the manor, so frozen fingers grabbed awkwardly at each other but it didn’t matter. Draco was staring into his mother’s room, at the curtain surrounding her bed for privacy. 

Was he brave enough to peel back the final layer of secrecy in his family? Strong enough to withstand it?

It was Hermione who led Draco inside and forced him to sit by his mother’s bedside. 

It was Draco who finally pulled back the curtain. 

Narcissa Malfoy was awake. Her complexion hadn’t improved; in fact, the crackles of ice coating her body had grown, making her look like a porcelain doll on the verge of collapse. While Hermione hadn’t heard what the doctor was saying, she was fairly adept at lip-reading and recognized that the man was right; Narcissa’s condition was most unusual and not a typical reaction to a dementor’s kiss. It was like she had frozen, and her soul was trapped inside unable to break free. Or when it did, her body would break from the pressure. 

Draco breathed deeply, the sound filling the room. Unlike muggle hospitals, St. Mungo’s did not have technology crowding patient rooms, so there weren’t any beeping monitors or cords getting in the way. All there was were the three occupants, a bed, a stool, and a serene landscape encompassing the entire side wall. In fact, the paint was moving as leaves fell in an autumnal scene. While the image radiated warmth from golds and burgundies and ochres, it only made Narcissa look even more fragile by contrast. Hermione’s stomach churned with nausea. She had seen enough corpses in her lifetime. They all had.

When Narcissa stirred a few moments later, neither Hermione nor Draco were surprised. What some people didn’t know about the dying is that the body has a surge of energy just before passing. The intensity of that energy varies, and for Narcissa, it was merely a flutter of her eyelashes, a deeper breath, recognition in her eyes at the face of her son. A strangled sound gargled in her throat before she was able to whisper softly. Draco had to lean over her in order to hear. 

With her final words, Narcissa’s lips curved into a soft smile as she looked at both Hermione and Draco. 

Hermione’s cheeks flushed and she could have sworn that Narcissa’s eyes sparkled for a moment, but the woman was lifeless before Hermione could blink. Draco’s mother was gone. 

The pair sat in silence for a long time, and only an incoming nurse calling for the doctor broke the spell. Slowly, they rose and walked out of the room, down the hall, through the building until they were outside in the falling snow. Draco took quick steps down the sidewalk away from the hospital and Hermione, being shorter and not as athletic, had to hurry to keep up. When he stopped abruptly and clutched at a handrail, they had already walked a mile down the path and were in a quiet domestic area. Everyone must have already been sleeping in their homes, their porch lights turned off.

Draco took giant gulps of air as though trying to cleanse his body of that place and that memory. He clutched the handrail so hard that Hermione worried he might damage his fingers. Right as Hermione approached, he turned towards her and engulfed her in his arms, recklessly forcing his entire body weight onto her. They collapsed together onto the sidewalk, the snow crunching beneath them. Draco continued to take huge gasps of air for a while before he was able to control his breathing. 

At that point, the only thing keeping them warm was the pocket of body heat created near their hearts. Everything else was on its way to numbness. Part of Draco wanted to succumb to that feeling of emptiness, let it take over, but he knew that they still had a job to complete. He wouldn’t be able to do it without her. 

“We have to go back to the manor,” he whispered into Hermione’s hair. “We have to find my father before he gets out. It may already be too late.” 

Hermione nodded, pulling away from Draco to look at his face. “But also, Draco, your father is quite dangerous now. I wouldn’t even call him your father anymore, honestly…” She hesitated but Draco’s features remained statuesque. “It may be best to call in the Aurors. Harry deals with these types of things on a regular basis, so he might--”

“No.”

“We’ve never handled anything like this before!”

“Specter or not, he’s my father so he is my responsibility. I won’t allow anyone else to be harmed for my family’s sins.”

Shaking her head, Hermione allowed Draco to pull her up to standing. She crossed her arms. “And that means you should risk your life unnecessarily? No. It’s smarter and safer to call in a professional. You saw what happened to your mother! Do you really want to end up like that? Or to fail and have that happen to others once your father gets out of the manor?”

Draco’s resolve settled in the clench of his jaw and Hermione knew there was no talking sense to him. “By the time the Aurors arrive,” Draco pressed, “it will be too late. We have to go now. I need to know you’ve got my back no matter what happens. That you’ll do what’s necessary to remove the threat.” 

The hair on Hermione’s arms rose and she hesitated, only briefly, but it was enough for Draco to notice. “What are you planning?” she asked slowly, her gaze narrowing. “Draco--”

A flash of red light was the last thing Hermione saw before everything went dark.

\- o - 

When she awoke, Draco was gone, but he had wrapped her in his coat for warmth before settling her on a nearby snowdrift. “That bastard!” Hermione screeched, fumbling for her wand. She threw off Draco’s jacket- a bit begrudgingly since it was actually quite warm- and got to her feet as quickly as possible. “That impossible, foolish, imbecile!”

It took her only a moment to contact Harry and wake him from his slumber, but as soon as she explained the situation in a rush, he was already scrambling to put on pants. “I’m heading to the manor now--”

“Hermione don’t you dare!”

“--to save Draco from his damned foolishness, but you need to be close behind--”

“You could DIE if you go there now!”

“--because if we can’t contain this thing, it might get out into the city and attack the first person it sees.”

“HERMIO--”

With a click, Hermione’s face disappeared from Harry’s crystal slate on the wall and he cursed aloud. What the fuck was she doing with Malfoy anyway to get caught up in all this mess?

\- o - 

Hermione arrived at the manor as quickly as she could, but twenty minutes had already passed since she had woken up. That didn’t include the time it took for Draco to knock her out, travel to the manor himself, and confront his father-turned-dementor on his own. For all Hermione knew, he had been there for at least thirty minutes on his own, possibly an hour. And that thought filled her stomach with lead.

This time the floo into the manor was blocked, so she had to come in through the front gates. Luckily they were closed, but she still managed to open them with ease-- not a comforting thought given the creature that lay inside. She took the front steps two at a time and stopped short as she noticed the front doors wide open. Was Draco inside and simply left the doors open like an idiot? Or had the creature gotten out and Draco was wandering the grounds? 

Either option was risky but Hermione had to make a decision… so she ran inside. Everything was dark and she immediately busted her shin on an overturned side table, but other than that, the room wasn’t as cold as before, which meant Lucius was probably not in that part of the house, at least. The rest of the house was dark and quiet so the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach only got worse. 

They were probably outside. The creature had gotten out of the manor. 

She rushed back outside and nearly toppled down the staircase. The manor grounds were foreign to her, but she rounded around the main building as fast as she dared without expending too much energy. Should she call out to Draco? Would that distract him and give the creature an opening to attack? Would it distract the creature? Draw it towards her?

There was only one way to find out…

“DRACO!”

She heard a crackle from behind the manor and ran in that direction to find a hedge labyrinth, somehow still dark green in the dead of winter, with fading sparks of a flare spell in the sky above. Hermione followed the smoke trail down to the edge of the Labyrinth. Draco was inside. _Fuck._

Clutching her hand tighter, she headed for the labyrinth opening. As she approached, she slowed to a walk and became more cautious. The creature might not be with Draco, it could be wandering around. If that was the case, it could just as easily attack her as it could attack Draco… and if Draco didn’t get to her in time, she could die. If she didn’t get to Draco in time, he could die… Where the hell was Harry fucking Potter! 

Swallowing her increasing frustration, she tried to remain level-headed and collected as she wove through the labyrinth. Recklessness and emotion would only get herself or Draco killed. She needed to think logically. Dementors had a homing beacon for people who had experienced traumas. Both she and Draco had experienced traumas, but Draco probably moreso. So the creature would probably go after Draco over her. But if she were closer, would it go for the easier target? 

She gripped her wand tighter and began thinking of happier thoughts to prepare herself if she needed a patronus. The only problem was that she doubted her patronus would even work, and that doubt was part of what made spells fizzle out in the first place. If you didn’t believe that the spell could work, it wouldn’t. Period. Many muggle-born wizards struggled with this concept during their first year at Hogwarts. Some, although rarely, even failed out of school altogether because of their disbelief in their own magical abilities.

Hermione couldn’t allow that to happen to her. Not now. She had to _believe_. If anyone could make her believe in anything despite all odds, wouldn’t it be Draco? Wasn’t their _whatever-this-was_ proof enough that anything was possible? 

A light shone through leaves on one of the hedges ahead of her and she sprinted in its direction, immediately casting a spell to remove the hedge so that she could jump through. Upon landing on the other side of the wall, she saw Draco backed against a hedge wall, his wand snapped in his hand. 

Lucius Malfoy, or the shell that resembled the man, hovered a few feet in front of his son, one of his rotting limbs reaching towards Draco as though to caress his face.

An intense feeling of knowing surged through Herminone’s body then, and the fuzziness of her silver-wisp dreams focused into perfect clarity. She had seen this image before, somewhere in her dreams. And her body moved on instinct. 

_“Expecto Patronum!”_

A beam of radiant white light burst forth from Hermione’s wand tip, and although a full patronus did not form, Hermione was relieved that anything happened at all. Lucius’s floating figure recoiled from the light and with a shriek, disappeared around the corner and into the darker recesses of the maze. It wouldn’t be long before it returned. Draco didn’t move. 

Hermione rushed to him and did her best to hoist him away from the wall and towards the exit she had made, but the man was dazed and _heavy_ like a rag doll. “Snap out of it!” she hissed, jabbing him in the stomach with her wand. She cast a mind clarity spell and Draco took a shaky breath before coming to. He wasn’t fully there, a bit slow to move, but it was enough that she didn’t have to drag him through the hole in the leaves. 

As they wandered through the maze, Hermione checked the leaves on the hedges for the tracking spell she used on her way inside. Thankfully, it too had worked, so as she came close to corners she had taken previously, they turned either red for “wrong path” or white for “correct path.” This led them to the entrance of the labyrinth, where Hermione plopped Draco onto the ground and sealed the entrance to the maze with a growth spell. The only indication that an entrance was once there being the stone pillars aside the hedge, their oil lanterns dark and unlit. 

Hermione lit the lanterns with a wave of her wand and shivered, taking a seat beside Draco. All the while inside the maze, every movement was so paramount that Hermione didn’t allow herself time to think, but sitting outside the maze waiting for the Aurors, Hermione found herself succumbing to her emotions.

Inside the maze, despite the fact that you could see the stars in the night sky above, everything was dark. There were lights lining the walls of the maze, but none of them were lit, or they were so faintly glowing that Hermione couldn’t tell. 

Her bones began to shake as she relived the experience, and she clenched her arms so tightly around herself that she was sure some frozen part of her would snap. Draco sat still, looking statuesque himself, but Hermione was too absorbed in herself to notice. The image of Lucius, now more skeletal and grotesque than even hours before, seared into her mind and Hermione tasted rot on her tongue. The white of his bones shone brightly as her patronus lit the area, and for the entire time she and Draco maneuvered through the maze towards the exit, Lucius stalked them. Glimpses of white in Hermione’s peripherals forced her to move faster, the scratch of his tattered clothing on the hedge walls made her vision blur, and the smell of her own inevitable death almost made her believe that _she_ was the one rotting, not the creature following them. 

Harry’s hand on her arm jolted her awake. She hadn’t realized that she was sleeping, or half asleep? Harry was crouched in front of both her and Draco, with one hand on either of their shoulders. “Did it touch you?” 

Hermione shook her head. Draco didn’t respond.

Sighing, Harry turned to address Draco. “Malfoy, is there another exit to the maze?” Draco shook his head no. “That’s a relief,” Harry muttered before continuing. “Did the creature touch you, Draco? I need to know so that we can properly treat you.”

Draco’s look turned sour and he forced himself to stand. “Doesn’t matter, Potter, because I’m going back in there.”

Hermione opened her mouth to yell at the man but Harry beat her to it. “That’s suicide, Malfoy, and you know it! There’s no way to kill these things that we know of yet, plus this particular breed is more of an anomaly. There are too many unknowns here for any of us to go traipsing in there like it’s a damned picnic!”

Draco’s fist collided with Harry’s jaw and sent Potter reeling. Rather than fight back, Harry grit his teeth and took a few steps back. “I know this is personal for you, Draco, but we can’t let you pretend to be a hero and become a martyr in the process. Your wand’s even broken! What are you expecting to do, huh?”

Draco’s entire body shuddered but he clenched his fists and took strong steps towards the labyrinth. “I have a plan, which would have worked if my wand hadn’t broken. Give me yours.” 

Harry pulled his wand from Draco’s reach as he tried to grab at it. “Don’t make me stun you, Malfoy. I don’t want to take you in against your will but if you keep insisting and become a danger to yourself- or to the entire community if you let that thing out- I won’t hesitate. I’m warning you. Knock it off.” 

Another Auror approached Harry then to discuss something, but Hermione wasn’t paying attention. She placed a hand on Draco’s upper arm but he recoiled like she’d stung him. 

“I told you that we had to take care of this ourselves, Hermione,” he hissed, decidedly not looking at her. “I thought you would have done anything necessary to keep my father from roaming free. But apparently you just couldn’t resist playing the hero and coming to my rescue. Well guess what? Now the Ministry is gonna come in and snoop around and more people are going to die because you couldn’t trust me to have a plan. You couldn’t trust yourself. I know you’re strong enough to subdue that creature on your own. Hell, that’s why I ran in there because I knew you’d be right behind me! But not to save me! To kill my father!” 

Draco ran both hands through his hair then and kicked at the snow on the ground. “I thought, _foolishly_ , that you wouldn’t go running to sodding Potter the moment I apparated out. I thought I could trust you to stay by my side no matter what.”

Hermione bristled and stomped on Draco’s foot as she forced her way in front of him so that he had no choice but to look at her. “If I ran in there without contacting Harry, we both could have been killed and that creature - NOT your father, Draco, because your father is _dead_ \- and it would have only been a matter of time before it found its way next door to kill some little girl or a muggle, for Merlin’s sake! Do you hear yourself? How could I have killed it? Hm? You ran off without even discussing this with me--”

“You could have used a fire spell, or an exploding spell, or _something_ \--”

“And kill you in the process? Why the bloody hell would I do that?”

“Because it’s my fucking family that cursed you! Don’t you get it? You could finally be free from all this mess if you just destroyed my father when I had him distracted! But now we’ll never be free from him! You’re just as cursed as I am, and there’s nothing I can do about it!”

Hermione noticed Harry watching them from a distance and her cheeks burned. She spoke quieter then, hopefully deterring any prying auror ears from listening. “Draco,” she breathed, reaching for his hand and not allowing him to tug it from her grasp. “You don’t have to try and save me. You’ve already done that. All this time we’ve spent together has been…” She took a breath and a small laugh escaped from her lips. “Maddening and beautiful and frustrating and complicated and- and you make me feel alive, Draco. More alive than I’ve felt in years. I couldn’t even fathom my life without you. So killing you just to be rid of some curse? Dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of.”

She paused a moment before continuing. “Yes, the curse is scary, and yes, we’ll have to figure it out and counteract its side effects. But there’s no one else I’d rather do that with than you.” Squeezing his hand, she prayed she hadn’t said too much. 

A spark lit in Draco’s eyes and for a moment, Hermione felt him lean closer towards her. But then the spark went out and he gently extricated himself from her grasp. “I need time to think,” he choked, turning his head away from her. “I just… I can’t…” 

As he struggled for words, Harry finally approached. “We’re ready to extract it now, Draco. Are you ready?”

With a nod to Potter, Draco followed Harry to the edge of the labyrinth, leaving Hermione to stand alone as the aurors did their work.

Any hope that she had for her and Draco’s relationship was snuffed out when he walked away without a glance behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in updating; I've been sitting on this chapter for a while but wasn't sure exactly how I wanted the sequence of events to occur. We've got 1-2 more chapters left before it's complete! Thanks always for reading and commenting! <3


	9. A Proposal

A week passed and the only contact she had with Draco was through Harry. 

“How is he?”

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, like he did every time Hermione asked that question. And she asked it at least twice per day. “The same as yesterday, and the day before that. He’s oddly robotic, but who can blame him? His father decays more by the day and all he can do is watch. We’ve got the best people on the case- we even called in help from America and France- but I doubt anything can be done.”

“What will happen to… it?”

“Well, if we can’t reverse the transformation, which in all likelihood he’s already too far gone for that, he will probably be sent to a facility to be studied.”

Hermione shivered. She knew it made sense for the magical community to study the creature, and perhaps even for Draco to cooperate due to the nature of the transformation and his family ties, but she couldn’t imagine what Draco was going through if he was part of the study or investigation. If he was watching them poke and prod at what _used to be_ his father… Hermione’s heart clenched at the thought. 

“We could really use your statement about the events leading up to the maze, Hermione.” 

She shook her head, much to Harry’s dismay. “No, I won’t submit anything without Draco’s permission. It’s not my story to tell.” 

A sigh passed Harry’s lips. “He’s keeping everything close to the vest. Won’t say much, just stands there watching. We can’t prevent this from happening to others if we don’t have any information.” He shut his eyes and rubbed his temples momentarily. “I know this is personal, but it goes beyond that if it’s a threat to our safety. To everyone’s safety. Surely of all people, you understand that, Hermione.”

A silence stretched between them. Hermione knew that Harry was right, but there wasn’t anything she could do. Draco hadn’t returned to his apartment. He wasn’t returning her calls over the wand network. He quit his job prior to their visit to the manor the first time, and she had no way of contacting anyone else Draco may have considered a friend without digging through Ministry files, and even then, she hadn’t seen or heard him talk to anyone else in the time they had worked together investigating the curse. Did he have no one to lean on? Confide in? No one but her?

Harry dismissed himself as Ginny came into the room and left Hermione alone with her thoughts. She passed most of the night this way, pacing around her loft, sitting at odd angles on the couch, on the floor, on her bed. Unable to sleep and unable to dream. She swallowed often, the lump in her throat never dislodging. She cursed at it, at the feeling that she had something to say but no way to say it. 

After leaving the labyrinth, she had time to think about the familiarity of the scene with Draco cowering helpless from his father, _no, from the dementor,_ pressed against the hedge, a liquid terror swirling in his eyes… Hermione shivered again. When she thought back to that memory, the edges blurred until the silver wisps from her dreams filled the edges like a border. The sharp bite of green apple assailed her senses and she bit down on the inside of her cheek. 

Had she been dreaming about that night? For how long? She wasn’t known for any skill in divination, so having a premonition was unfathomable to her. What could it all mean?

A light knock on her door, quick and short, caught her attention. Shuffling to the foyer, Hermione steeled herself and placed her hand on the doorknob. Her blood warmed and an overwhelming sense of knowing made her fingers tingle. There was only one person who would be at her door at this hour. Only one person brazen enough to appear at five in the morning. 

When the door creaked open, she expected to see Draco. But what she found left her startled. It was definitely Draco, but the man looked worse than Hermione had ever seen. His clothes hung loosely off his body, his once handsome cheekbones looked sharp enough to light a match, and the gray of his eyes was so dark that it looked black. 

Those eyes brightened a shade at seeing Hermione. “You answered,” he croaked, rubbing his throat. “I wasn’t sure… I thought…” He wrung his wrists between his hands as he struggled for words. “May I come in?”

Hermione held the door so tightly in her hand that were the door any older, the wood might have splintered. Her heart pleaded with her to say yes, but she stood her ground. Draco hadn’t answered her calls or messages for seven days. He had been avoiding her. Why should she let him in now?

Draco cleared his throat and winced from the sting of it. “I understand if you… don’t want to.” He swallowed. “I just needed time to think, Hermione. I told you that.”

Hermione’s sharp intake of breath made Draco recoil. “ _Told me that?_ Draco, you practically ran away from me that night. Then you avoided me and haven’t said a word. So really, that’s all I needed to hear. Your actions clearly show that you want nothing to do with me. Goodnight.”

She moved to close the door but Draco reached out to stop her. Rather than hold the door open, he merely put his hand in the way and Hermione smashed his fingers as she tried to pull the door closed. He sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t make any other sound. “Please, Hermione,” he whimpered. “I need to talk to you. I have something I need to say.” 

Hermione wasn’t sure she needed to hear it, but she pursed her lips and nodded anyway.

Tossing the door open in his face and stomping down the hall, Hermione led Draco to her kitchen where she poured them both cups of earl grey tea. She didn’t offer him any sugar or cream. “Well, what is it?” 

Draco left his cup untouched and leaned against the kitchen island. He crossed his arms and his sleeves bunched up, revealing a sliver of his dark mark, still cracked and raw, at the bottom edge. “I know you’re angry. And upset. You have every right to be.”

Hermione took a gulp of scalding tea and burned the roof of her mouth.

“They took my father, you know. To some facility. _Rehabilitation,_ they called it. What a load of rubbish.” 

Silence filled the air as Draco waited for Hermione to comment, but she sipped her tea loudly before refilling her cup. With a sigh, he continued. “I haven’t told them about the curse. About us. If they have more information, they haven’t led on. Honestly, I figure if the transformation has to do with dark magic, they’ve seen this before, maybe even dealt with it in other countries and other Ministries or governments. There’s no way this is isolated to my family alone.”

He finally reached for his tea but didn’t take a drink, merely stared into its depths, or perhaps at his own reflection looking back at him. The blonde of his hair was peppered with white, his face in a similar state of colorlessness. A ghost of himself. Unfamiliar. _Dying._ He laced his fingers around the mug and tried to absorb as much of its warmth as possible. 

“Is that it?” Hermione asked finally, a feeling of discomfort bubbling in her chest. Draco looked positively _awful_ , and all she wanted to do was throw her arms around him and will some life back into him. She was afraid that if she wasn’t careful, he’d disintegrate into dust before her very eyes. 

Draco fidgeted for a moment under Hermione’s gaze. “Not exactly…”

Hermione set her cup down and moved to the living room. She needed air. Space. Something. Opening her balcony door, she stepped outside. It was still dark, but the stars in the sky were slowly blending into the background with each passing minute. It was only a matter of time before sunrise. The chill in the air wasn’t as strong as the past few weeks, signaling the steady approach of spring. Hermione had never looked more forward to a season change than that night. 

Draco had followed Hermione onto the small balcony before sliding closed the glass door behind him. Despite the cold, Draco didn’t have the energy to shiver. Everything was cold now. All the time. No matter what he did. Setting his mug on the ground by the railing, he settled in beside Hermione, his arms draped across the metal rail. Even Hermione raised a brow at how unflinching he was at the cold 

“When we went to visit my mother,” Draco began, “she told me something I had never heard before.” He spoke slowly, as though choosing his words carefully. “In my family, it’s tradition to marry within the bloodline. It’s always been told that this is to keep the blood magical and increase the potency of our spells, increase our strength. Of course, we know that to be illogical now, but nonetheless the practice has more or less continued over the past few centuries. Mostly for discriminatory reasons. Or tradition. A bit of both, perhaps.” 

He drew a breath and paused to see if Hermione would comment. Still nothing. So he continued. “With her dying breath, my mother chose to tell me that there’s another reason for arranged marriages. I didn’t understand it at first- and the woman wasn’t fully coherent, mind you- but I went back to the family journal and did some digging. I even sent an owl to another head of house in my family to confirm. It appears…” He swallowed. “The specific marriage ceremony used is a type of ancient magic. Soul-binding. Your magic becomes tied together, your _souls_ become tied together, and whatever you do magically affects your partner.” His eyes flickered to Hermione but she was staring stonily ahead at the top of the treeline. “This is why some of my family members have been… particularly evil. If one of them uses dark magic, it taints the other one. Then they both become more powerful with dark magic. But as we know, that also means that they both are subject to the dementor curse. It’s probably something that Voldemort also used with his dark mark. Maybe he put a small, tiny piece of his soul in the magic. Not so large as to be a horcrux, but large enough that we can feel him writhing beneath our skin.”

Draco bit his bottom lip, unintentionally drawing blood. With a grimace, he wiped the blood on his forearm and downed a swallow of his tea to wash out the taste. “But just as the dark magic can taint each person in the marriage, so too can light magic. Or good intentions. Or something. This part is a little vague since my family is better known for their dealings in the dark arts. But for one person, they got married later in life. Their spouse was not known for dark magic, so I assume they were married more for money or simply to sire an heir. Whatever the case, the husband was heavily into the dark arts and his new wife was not. At the point in their marriage, the husband was already decaying. Not literally decaying, but not doing well… Sort of like me, I think.”

This time Hermione turned towards Draco, and the swirl of sadness and pain in her eyes made Draco feel guilty. It seemed that all he could do was bring her nothing but pain. And his family had everything to do with that.

“But when they got married, that began to change. Somehow, the curse was slowed, or lessened. I’m not really sure since the account is also inconclusive, but if their souls and magic were bound together, it would make sense that the connection goes both ways. Maybe the curse would spread out to affect both of them, but in a diluted form, like ink in water. Maybe a lack of dark magic usage allowed the wounds to heal over time. I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to know how it works. But the fact is that according to the notes and my relative’s account, the husband got better - not completely, mind you, but still better - and never transformed.” 

The tingling in Hermione’s hands from when she stood at her front door returned and spread up her arms. She didn’t dare- _dare_ \- let her mind wander where it wanted to. Her heart, however, beat on its own and picked up the pace, betraying her wishes. Despite the cold, her body began to grow hot and she wished to shed her clothes and throw herself into the snow.

“So I guess,” Draco murmured, his voice growing quieter. “This is where I come to you.” 

Hermione’s heart skipped a beat and she felt faint. 

Draco must have noticed a change in her demeanor because somehow his cheeks dusted pink too and he relaxed a margin. He swallowed again before turning fully to face Hermione. Placing his hands on her arms, he leaned close, nearly whispering now. “Please understand,” he began, “the last thing I want is to burden you with anything. In truth, I want to run as far from here as possible and leave you to live a happy life. A life without me, without my family curse, without any of this bullshit we’ve found ourselves in. But I’ve come to a few conclusions over the past few days. So just hear me out, okay?”

Hermione could only nod.

“Okay, so… I’ve always been… complicated. My life, I mean. Anyone I would have married had my family legacy stayed intact would have been someone of my parents’ choosing. Someone already in the life. But now that that’s all gone to shit with the end of the last war, thank Merlin, I’m finally free to do as I please with my life. With my future. And with my future _wife._ ” He emphasized this last word. “But because of the curse, anyone I marry will also face the same fate. They will be cursed. Regardless of the potency of the curse, our souls and magics will be linked, and that means that all of the wrong-doings of my past will come up to haunt me, to haunt us. On top of that, this dark mark is constantly emitting dark magic of some kind, so that will continue to poison for the rest of my life. It’s not fair to bring someone into that, someone innocent.

“Which means in reality, I should just never marry. I should just live out the rest of my days in solitude, spend the rest of what pittance remains of the Malfoy fortune, and piss off from the rest of the world. But I don’t really want to do that, and I fear that I’ll end up like my father with no one to stop me from harming anyone else. I don’t want to become a monster.”

He clenched his jaw for a moment and Hermione could feel him shaking as he held her. He forced himself to continue. “So then what’s my other option? Suicide?” He grimaced and Hermione reached up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist. A jolt ran through them both and they shivered simultaneously. “So, what do I do?”

Hermione interrupted then, removing Draco’s hands from her arms and holding them between her own. “What are you asking me, Draco?”

Draco’s eyes flashed with a mixture of emotions and he tried to pull away from her, but she held on tightly and spoke for him. “I’m already cursed, which means that you can’t hurt me. I’m not an innocent stranger you could corrupt. I’m already marked. I also know enough about the curse and its effects to help you with it. Help _us_ with _our_ curse.” Hermione squeezed his hands but the man stood frozen to the spot. “It’s an oddly perfect situation, isn’t it?”

“A perfect situation? Your definition of perfect differs from mine, Granger.” Draco’s nose crinkled but he gripped Hermione’s hands lightly. “Nothing about this is perfect. It’s a nightmare.”

She could tell that he wanted to run a hand down his face but she didn’t let go of his hands to allow it. “Well, it’s not an ideal proposal of course, but given our circumstances, it makes sense. I understand why you came to this conclusion.” In truth, although marrying Draco seemed an extreme measure, Hermione welcomed it. Extreme measures for extreme circumstances made sense. And if this was the only way to keep Draco in her life… well, it was a price she was willing to pay. The rest of the world would just have to adjust, Harry and Ron included. “It _is_ sudden, admittedly. I don’t know if I’m quite ready for marriage just yet.”

Draco nodded in agreement. “I would never pressure you into this if I had any other choice, Hermione. And really, you can back out at any time. I won’t hold it against you. Being tied to me…” He took a deep breath and released it painfully slow, blowing warm air across Hermione’s cheeks. “Well, I can’t imagine a worse fate than that.” 

Hermione felt a pang in her chest and moved closer to Draco, closing the distance between them but keeping their fingers intertwined against their chests. She could feel their hearts pounding against her hands, his faster than hers, more erratic. “You undersell yourself, Draco,” she breathed softly, staring into his eyes. The golden glow she had glimpsed throughout the past few weeks was more noticeable than before, perhaps now permanent. She wasn’t sure what it meant but knew it had something to do with the curse. Draco needed this. He needed _her_. Or else he might truly become the monster he already believed he was. 

But Hermione knew better.

“You’re not your father. You never have been. Now you have the chance to prove it to yourself. To let yourself _feel_ it, to be the man you’ve always wanted.” She lifted his hands and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “Let’s just see where this goes, okay? No pressure.”

He scoffed and the sound caught in his throat, crackling to a stop. His eyebrows pinched together as he swallowed. “There’s always pressure when you’re around, Granger.”

“Hopefully the good kind?”

Draco hummed in thought for a moment, but a smile curved on his lips. “Definitely the good kind.” 

After a beat of silence, Hermione tugged Draco onto the wooden balcony and sat beside him, draping the blanket she left on the porch earlier that night across their shoulders. Nothing had been promised, no vows made, but the possibility hung in the air like the coming of a sunrise. Warm, hopeful, full of light. 

They sat shoulder to shoulder on Hermione’s balcony, a woven blanket draped across them. As the sky blossomed into petals of pinks and oranges amidst the indigo backdrop, that inescapable _something_ between them flickered to life and warmed their bodies, melted their hearts, and intertwined their souls, if only a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHHH *Screams Internally* I just love the dialogue in this chapter!
> 
> The only thing left is what I will call an epilogue <3 Thanks so much for reading and commenting!! I love to hear your thoughts!!


	10. Epilogue: The Nightmare Ends

The morning that he and Hermione watched the sun crawl into the sky was the same day he began preparations for the soul-binding ritual. The process was so intricate that he finally understood why his family insisted on betrothals; it game ample time for preparation. But he and Hermione didn’t have that much time; Draco suspected he had about a month, give or take a few days, before he succumbed to the poison. 

Within two weeks, he was coughing blood. 

He did his best to keep this from Hermione, but when she didn’t leave his side except for work, that made things a bit difficult.

“You’re sure you don’t need anything more? Tea? Vitamins? Sandwich?” She was furiously applying product to her hair before throwing it in a bun and rushing to the Ministry. It was about to be her third late instance this week, a mark on her record. 

“I’m fine, Hermione, I promise,” Draco forced, holding out her coat and helping her into it. “Don’t let Malick stomp on your defense this morning. The Morgan case is an important one even if that oaf can’t see it.” 

Hermione clicked her teeth together and tossed a glare at Draco over her shoulder. “He’d be more likely to believe it if you were there to defend your case yourself. I’m sure they’d let you come back on a part-time basis.”

Draco kissed Hermione’s forehead and rushed her to the door. “Yes, yes,” he murmured, “I’ll get right on that as soon as I put some makeup on to cover my ghastly complexion.”

She was gone with a loud _crack_ as she apparated away. For some reason she banned apparition within her loft, something Draco contributed to her relationship with Weaselbee and Potter. In the time he had spent at her apartment, both had tried to arrive unannounced. Probably to make sure that Draco hadn’t eaten their precious friend or something. Ridiculous. 

Grumbling under his breath, Draco got to his own work for the day. 

In the time since his father’s removal for _rehabilitation_ , a few things had become apparent. Firstly, the worse Draco’s condition became, the worse his dreams. Initially when everything began, he dreamt of the rattle of a dementor’s bones, their cloaks scratching against the window pane, the feeling of his heart freezing in his chest… Then it became the actual dementors’ presence as the creature stalked towards him. These dreams Hermione was present for during their initial research into the patronus, although he didn’t tell her about them. 

Lately, however, the dream shifted until the only light in the room came from the golden runes they had seen in the Azkaban cell. Those runes lined the walls of the sealed room of Draco’s dreams, no windows or doors in sight. Nothing but darkness, then nothing but the runes. 

Now every time he blinked, he saw the runes’ sickly yellow glow in the dark space behind his eyelids. 

Secondly, any magic made his condition worse. After his wand had broken, he set it aside in an oak box and began using his mother’s. Thankfully the wand recognized him, or his magic essence, or however the hell it worked. So the wand cooperated. It vibrated on a different frequency than his own wand, so that took some adjusting in his movements and the force with which he used spells, but it worked and that was what mattered. The only problem was that every time he apparated, every time he tried a simple charm to make his life easier, he could feel the poison spreading through his veins. It's like it was tied to his magic, feeding off of it... It was something he tried not to think about. 

Draco apparated to Malfoy grounds, like he did every day, walked around the manor, entered the labyrinth where his father took his last stand, and wove through the corridors until he stepped upon a stone path winding towards the center of the maze. His footsteps were soundless as he closed in on a small fountain, its water long drained and its basin empty. Stepping over the ledge, he reached for the water spout and with a flick of his wrist, dropped baby blue sparks from the tip of his wand into the empty spout. A few seconds passed before a set of tiles aside the fountain base rumbled and shifted, each piling atop another, until a set of stairs was revealed beneath them. Draco stepped out of the fountain and began descending the stairs as quickly as possible. Even that was enough to wind him, so he clutched his side when he came to the bottom. 

All along the staircase, candles hidden in the walls flickered to life as he passed, and at the bottom a large cup, similar in size and appearance to the goblet of fire used in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, sat atop a stone platform. Inside, a swirl of magical mixture that Draco had been preparing for the last two weeks greeted him. It wasn’t Amortentia, the strongest love potion known to wizardkind, but it shared similar properties. Draco had already been preparing it for Hermione and himself, so he could smell the wildflower scent of her hair even from a few feet away. 

It was only a matter of time. 

He shivered involuntarily as his dark mark writhed. Since the binding magic was similar in nature to the one Voldemort used to place the mark, it always acted up around the goblet. He hated the feeling. Hopefully it would be subdued once the ritual was complete. 

He spent a few hours in the cavern, setting more candles, magically enhancing the cave ceiling to look like the sky above, and other homely touches. The spell dictated that the betrothed need drink from the magical concoction, already imbued with their magical essence thanks to Draco (and Hermione agreeing beforehand to lend him her wand), and sleep in the cavern to solidify their union.

Well, _sleep together_ in every sense of the word. 

In all honesty, Draco wasn’t sure if he could successfully put out. It ashamed him to admit, but with his body breaking down by the hour, how could he perform? 

Running a hand down his face, he groaned aloud. Would the spell take if they didn’t consummate it? Probably not. Would they have to climax or just seal the deal, for lack of a better phrase? 

The idea to ask Hermione crossed his mind daily, but he didn’t want to admit that he _didn’t know enough_ about the ritual. It would have been easier were his parents alive to ask, but that option had expired. They would just have to follow the guidelines as best as possible and wing the rest. Maybe their magic would guide the way?

Hermione came home a few hours later and Draco was waiting for her. He figured now was better than never… and never was quickly approaching. He cleared his throat and ignored the sting. “Hermione,” he breathed, watching her shrug off her coat from his perch on her coffee table. He watched her open her mouth to say something but when she glanced up at Draco and saw him brooding, the words died in her throat. 

“It’s time, isn’t it?”

Draco nodded and stood, slinking towards her. “You can back out now. You’re not required to do anything, and I won’t be angry. I won’t hold it against you.”

Hermione took a breath and her forehead creased for a split second before it settled into resolve. “No, we’re in this together. What do I need to do?”

Linking their hands, Draco wrapped an arm around Hermione and pressed a kiss to her forehead before apparating them to the manor. They remained quiet until he had led her into the underground chamber. The air was electric from their combined magic, enhanced by the swirling mixture in the center of the room. It made it harder for Draco to breathe, but he tried to hide his wheezing. Leading Hermione to the basin, he motioned for her to sit on one side while he sat across from her. They stared at each other for a long moment before they moved, completely in sync. Draco hadn’t explained the procedure to her, but there was something about the feel of the room, the fire in their veins, that propelled them both to action.

They were in perfect unison. Together, they held up wine glasses Draco had procured from the mansion and prompted each other to drink, one holding the glass to the other’s lips. Throughout the night, they had to drink the entire goblet full. Initially this seemed like a daunting task, but it turned out to be quite easy as the drink tasted impeccable, although undoubtedly different for each of them.

With each sip, Draco’s body felt renewed, invigorated, and… ready to fuck. The flush trailing down Hermione’s neck told a similar story. As surprising as it was that the liquid worked so quickly, Draco wasn’t one to complain. He wondered why they had to drink the entire goblet, but perhaps some questions were better left unanswered. 

They spent the night sprawled out atop the bedding he had brought into the cavern, staring up at the stars. When the moon, nearly full at this point in its cycle, lay directly overhead, their conversation ceased. The hours had ticked by easily as they talked about future plans, the logistics of a legal marriage, among other topics. Now, however, the mood shifted as the moonlight cast a soft glow in the cavern and across their skin. Hermione lay nude and positively radiant against the emerald duvet, her soft curls fanned out around her shoulders, her lips parted and inviting. 

When Draco trailed his fingers up her arm and settled them on her neck, he could feel her heart beating strong in his palm. When he kissed down her body, between her breasts, her gasps made his body thrum to life. When they finally united, their combined magics heightened all of their senses. 

Taste: like lavender and honey with a hint of salt.  
Sound: breaths hitching, nails catching on sheets.  
Smell: like the ocean, raw and full of mystery.  
Sight: translucent, magical steam rising from porcelain skin.  
Touch: like sparks across their skin, setting their nerves on fire. 

It was how Draco imagined Heaven, if he believed in such a thing. It was complete bliss. It was downright _sinful_. It was more than either of them could take and felt like their bodies were breaking down and mending all at once. 

The threads holding their individual identities together unraveled piece by piece in order to be woven back together, intertwined at their core. Souls linked. 

For Draco, it was like coming up for air after being held beneath the surface. For Hermione, it was like sinking in warm bathwater, a comforting pressure, but pressure nonetheless. 

When the sun rose, the goblet had been drained, their bodies had been united _more than once_ , and the ceremony was complete.

\- o - 

Even when Hermione was away at work or running errands or visiting Potter or the Weasel, Draco could feel her emotions swirling inside him. Depending on the distance, he could _taste_ her. The farther the distance, however, the weaker the connection. But it was always there, no matter how small.

Draco considered it lucky that he didn’t need to break the news to anyone that he and Hermione had gotten married, but his new wife wasn’t so lucky. Draco went with her to introduce himself as her husband one evening at the Burrow, and the mother was so shocked that she broke a stack of plates. Arthur, whom Draco had known through the Ministry and his father’s connections, as well as their distant relation to him by blood, didn’t seem surprised in the slightest which was probably the most shocking event of them all. 

The Weasel glowered over his pot roast, but Potter asked a multitude of questions, not nearly as grumpy as his friend. Perhaps the man had seen this coming, given his involvement in Lucius’s extraction. Maybe Hermione had told Potter of their arrangement previously, although she hadn't mentioned it to Draco.

Overall the evening went well, despite Weasel’s behavior. The rest of the family seemed accepting enough, and Draco even got along with Arthur so well that the man offered him brandy. It was a start, and Draco was grateful that Hermione’s chosen family hadn’t excommunicated them on sight, unlike how his family would have reacted had the situation been reversed.

It was strange and filled Draco with a hope he hadn’t known was missing, a hope for normalcy. A hope for a life without chaos and deviancy and betrayal. Something… simpler. 

Something only Hermione could give him.

Of course, they still had to research the curse, but it was much more leisurely now than before. They had _time_. Time to explore, time to enjoy, time to feel, time to _heal._

Hermione gave him the freedom he always yearned for. It was the most selfless thing she could have done, and something she gave willingly. 

And when she first told him that she loved him, the words flowed from her lips for hours, like she had been holding it in for years and the dam had finally broken. Relief eased the tension in her shoulders and she clutched at her throat, laughing endlessly, the sound music to Draco’s ears. He wasn’t exactly sure what overcame her, but it was beautiful nonetheless. She was always beautiful. 

For the rest of their lives, perhaps even into the afterlife if they truly were soul-bound, he would never allow her to wonder just how much he loved her. Not just for what she had already given him, but for what she continued to give. He reminded her every day, in every way he knew how. And in return, she soothed his fears and drenched him in that same steady, calm, relentless love. 

It really was an oddly perfect union, but perfect nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end, folks! Thank you so much for the journey and the feedback; I love reading your comments and hope to reply to everyone soon <3 I don't think I'll come back to this specific story of our beloved Dramione but definitely be on the lookout for some one shots, if not a longer fic in the future. :) Many blessings to you!


End file.
